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2004 and preceding

• The Human Cost of Sanctions
  History Professor Explores
  December 16, 2004 :: No. 106
  William W. Haddad, chair and professor of history, has studied the role of American sanctions against Iraq and the effects of such action on the lives of Iraqis. His new book, Iraq: the Human Cost of History, outlines the reasons why these sanctions failed and how it has affected the viewpoint of Iraqi citizens toward the United States.
  For 12 years, the United States and Great Britain applied economic sanctions against the nation of Iraq. Initially, the sanctions were started in 1990 by the United Nations, ostensibly to drive Iraq from Kuwait. "When that goal was achieved in 1991, most countries wanted to lift or revise the sanctions because of the terrible toll they were taking on the Iraqi people," says William Haddad, chair and professor of history at Cal State Fullerton. "The United States and Britain opposed ending the sanctions, and this 12-year opposition contributed to the suspicion and anger that many Iraqis feel toward American policy today."
  In a well-known interview that Lesley Stahl conducted with Madeleine Albright, who was then U.S. ambassador to the U.N., she asked, 'More than 500,000 Iraqi children are already dead as a direct result of UN sanctions. Do you think the price is worth paying?' Albright responded, 'It is a difficult question. But, yes, we think the price is worth it.' And this was after only five years of sanctions." [Sanctions]
• Domestic Costs of Sanctions on Foreign Commerce
  CBO TESTIMONY
  Statement of Jan Paul Acton Assistant Director, Natural Resources and Commerce Division Congressional Budget Office on Domestic Costs of Sanctions on Foreign Commerce
  before the Committee on International Relations U.S. House of Representatives June 3, 1998
• Internet Sales Show Big Gains Over Holidays
  By MICHAEL BARBARO Published: December 30, 2005 Online retailers, whose growth was expected to level off after a decade of dizzying gains, experienced a stellar holiday season, according to two preliminary reports released yesterday, as traditional stores like Wal-Mart and Target cemented their place on the Web.
  Consumer spending online reached $18.1 billion in November and December, a 25 percent increase over 2004, according to the research firm ComScore Networks. Nielsen/NetRatings, another research firm, said Web purchases totaled $30.1 billion in the period, an increase of 30 percent. Unlike ComScore, Nielsen includes spending at online auction sites like eBay, accounting for its higher figure. Online commerce still represents less than 6 percent of all retail sales, but the numbers indicate that it has finally become part of mainstream American shopping.
• US intelligence service bugged website visitors despite ban
  · Agency apologises for use of 'cookie' tracking files · Exposure adds to pressure over White House powers
  The intelligence service at the centre of the row over eavesdropping tracked visitors to its website, despite US government regulations. Monitoring files, known as "cookies", were discovered by a privacy activist at a time when the White House is on the defensive about its use of the National Security Agency to monitor the communications of US citizens. Although the cookies were dismantled this week and the NSA issued an apology on Wednesday, the episode will add to pressure on the White House to engage in a national debate about its use of the agency, and its interpretation of the constitutional limits on George Bush's presidential powers.
  The chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Arlen Specter, confirmed this week that he intends to conduct hearings into President Bush's secret order in 2002 authorising the NSA to conduct email and telephone surveillance of US citizens without a court warrant. The hearings are expected to get under way next month. "There likely will be a national debate about whether the president really has the kind of power he's been using," Mr Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters. In a posting on his googlewatch.org website a privacy activist, Daniel Brandt, says he discovered that the NSA was using tracking devices when he logged on to the agency website on Christmas Day. He found the site was using two persistent cookies that would not expire until 2035, well beyond the life of most computers. While the use of cookies is seen as a convenience at commercial websites, allowing a visitor access without laboriously retyping passwords, their utility for government websites - which do not typically have repeat visits - is uncertain.
• With Satellite Launch, E.U. Positions Itself To Compete
  Navigational System Aims To Break U.S. Monopoly
  By Molly Moore Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 29, 2005; A14
  PARIS, Dec. 28 -- The European Union on Wednesday launched the first satellite in its $4.5 billion Galileo global positioning system, a bid to enhance the world's growing reliance on satellite navigation and break the U.S. monopoly on space-based networks. Officials of the European Space Agency said the Galileo system -- scheduled to begin operation in 2008 -- will double the world's satellite coverage, now provided by the U.S. military's Global Positioning System. Galileo will be more accurate than its American counterpart for civilian uses and so will allow such enhanced services as tracing emergency calls to within a yard of their origin and helping tourists find an ATM in a strange city using a chip inserted into a cell phone, the officials said. Many Europeans see political significance in the project, too: The world's only civilian-controlled system will give Europe and its partner nations independence from the United States, which has warned it could diminish or cut off GPS satellite coverage to countries considered enemies in times of national emergency. Galileo represents "the independence of the European Union," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Wednesday after the 1,300-pound test satellite soared into orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
  In addition to technical hurdles, financial challenges remain. European authorities must line up corporate investors for about two-thirds of the cost of the system. The European Space Agency has also warned that Galileo, a joint venture between the space agency and the European Union, faces numerous bureaucratic obstacles because it involves so many countries. China, India, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine are all partners in the project.
• As Scrutiny Grows, Burma Moves Its Capital
  Country's Isolation Is Taken One Step, and Many Miles, Further By Alan Sipress Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, December 28, 2005; A01 RANGOON, Burma -- Military trucks rumble up in front of Rangoon's ministries several times a week and workers lug ancient desks, chairs and filing cabinets to the waiting vehicles. The convoys depart at daybreak on a 12-hour journey along roads badly rutted and pocked, then return for another load. Burma's military rulers are rapidly transferring the country's century-old capital from Rangoon to the desolate, rocky terrain of Pyinmana about 200 miles to the north, aiming to empty most offices by the end of next month.
  Few in Rangoon can fathom the motives for the abrupt move, which began Nov. 6. Most observers and even some government officials say they suspect it was solely the brainchild of Gen. Than Shwe, the secretive head of Burma's ruling military junta. Some have speculated that government fears of a U.S. invasion are to blame for the move, or perhaps civil unrest or even the prophesies of a soothsayer.
• Specter Urges Discipline in Hussein Trial
  Senator, in Baghdad, Says Judges Have Let Ex-Leader 'Dominate the Proceedings' By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, December 28, 2005; A15
  BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 -- Saddam Hussein's judges should take control of his chaotic trial, Sen. Arlen Specter said here Tuesday, either by holding him in contempt for his repeated disruptions of the proceedings or banishing him from the courtroom. Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said U.S. officials in Baghdad had told him that they expect Hussein to face a half-dozen trials. That would raise the prospect of months or years of proceedings unless conviction, condemnation and hanging for any one case stop the clock on trials to follow. [Human rights]
• Chalabi Lacks Votes Needed to Win Spot in Iraqi Assembly
  By Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, December 27, 2005; A18
  BAGHDAD, Dec. 26 -- Unexpectedly low support from overseas voters has left Ahmed Chalabi -- the returned Iraqi exile once backed by the United States to lead Iraq -- facing a shutout from power in this month's vote for the country's first full-term parliament since the 2003 invasion. Rebounding violence, which included bombings, assassination attempts and other attacks, claimed at least 19 lives in Iraq on Monday, including that of an American soldier. Eight members of a single Iraqi SWAT team were wiped out in what Iraqi authorities described as an hour-long shootout with better-armed insurgents. With 95 percent of a preliminary tally from the Dec. 15 vote now completed, Chalabi remained almost 8,000 votes short of the 40,000 minimum needed for him or his bloc to win a single seat in the 275-seat National Assembly, according to election officials. Without a seat in the assembly, Chalabi would presumably be unable to obtain a post in the resulting government.
• Europe's space race with US begins
  · GPS monopoly challenged by new satellite network
  · China snubs America to be involved in project
  Ian Sample, science correspondent Tuesday December 27, 2005 The Guardian
  At 3am tomorrow morning a Russian Soyuz rocket is set to streak into the skies over Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a satellite that is purpose built to break one of the most ubiquitous monopolies on Earth. If all goes according to plan, the rocket will soar to a height of 14,000 miles before releasing Giove-A, a wardrobe-sized box of electronics, into orbit. Once in position it will gently unfold its twin solar panels and begin to loop around the planet twice each day. In doing so, Europe's most expensive space project, a rival to the US military-run global positioning system GPS, will have taken its first step.
  Giove-A is a test satellite that paves the way for a network of 30 more to be launched in 2006 and beyond. Together they will form Galileo, a £2.3bn global positioning system more reliable and accurate than GPS. Galileo has been hailed in Europe as a means to make money. The highly accurate tracking system means road charging could be automated, air traffic monitored with unprecedented precision and goods tracked to people's doors. With mobile phones due to include satellite-positioning receivers, emergency calls will be traced to within a metre. If industry embraces Galileo, it could drive a multibillion euro market, say experts.
  But Galileo is largely a political project, aimed at asserting Europe's independence.
  The US also balked at China's signing of a multimillion pound contract to be part of the Galileo project. [China confrontation] [Imperialism] [US military]
• Amazing grace toward torture
  By HUGH CORTAZZI
  LONDON -- It beggars belief that U.S. President George W. Bush took so long to endorse Sen. John McCain's resolution against the use of torture by the CIA or any other U.S. organization. The resolution has been passed by an overwhelming majority in the U.S. Senate and by Congress but was, it seems, fiercely opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his neocon supporters, who seem to believe that evil means can be justified if the results benefit America. Terrorists welcome such an attitude. It shows, they assert, that they are fighting against an evil regime. This is, of course, a perversion of the facts, but the use of evil means is grist to the terrorists' arguments. Torture is barbaric and a throwback to medieval times. Information obtained by torture is never reliable. [Human rights] [Double standards]
• Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping
  Former Justice Official Says He Was Interpreting Law, Not Making Policy By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 26, 2005; A03
  John Yoo knows the epithets of the libertarians, the liberals and the lefties. Widely considered the intellectual architect of the most dramatic assertion of White House power since the Nixon era, he has seen constitutional scholars skewer his reasoning and students call for his ouster from the University of California at Berkeley. Civil liberties advocates were appalled by a memo he helped draft on torture. The State Department's chief legal adviser at the time called his analysis of the Geneva Conventions "seriously flawed." Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, in a critique of administration views espoused by Yoo, "a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." Yoo has alienated so many influential opponents that he is considered unconfirmable for a judgeship or high office, not unlike a certain conservative jurist rejected by the Senate for the Supreme Court.
  Yoo traces his convictions in no small part to his parents, and Ronald Reagan. His father and mother are psychiatrists who grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation and the Korean War. They emigrated in 1967, when Yoo was 3 months old. They sought three things, he said: education, economic opportunity and democracy. They settled in Philadelphia because they admired Eugene Ormandy, then conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
  Coming of age in an anti-communist household, Yoo said, he associated strong opposition to communist rule with the Republican Party and was himself "attracted to Reagan's message." What he liked most in conservatism was "the grounding in reason and reasonableness." Yoo attended Episcopal Academy, a private religious school where he studied history, Latin and Greek. Then came Harvard, where he discovered that many people he encountered "were very different-minded, who thought that conservatives were actually sort of stupid or backward." He studied diplomatic history and worked for the school newspaper, where in 1988 he wrote a presidential endorsement of George H.W. Bush rejected by the editorial board's liberal majority. [Imperialism] [Japanese colonialism]
• Market trader found guilty of plotting to kill British soldier
  · Information on decorated corporal found in flat · Accused 'believed killing would aid Islamic cause' Riazat Butt Friday December 23, 2005 The Guardian
  A market trader who plotted to "hunt down" and kill a British soldier decorated for bravery in Iraq was yesterday convicted under the Terrorism Act. Abu Mansha, 21, was found guilty at Southwark crown court of possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. When he was arrested last March he was found to have an address for Corporal Mark Byles, a soldier who had led a charge on Iraqi rebels that left around 20 insurgents dead, the court heard. Police raided his flat and found a replica gun along with anti-western DVDs.
  During the two-week trial, the jury of seven women and five men heard from David Cocks QC, prosecuting, that Mansha believed that killing the war hero would intimidate the British public and British troops, so advancing the radical Islamic cause.
  Cpl Byles led a charge on Iraqi rebels in May 2004. His bravery and professionalism in the assault earned him a Military Cross. Newspaper reports described the corporal's feats in battle and reported him as saying: "It was either them or me." The story described him rifle-butting, punching and kicking Iraqi rebels in hand-to-hand combat. Cpl Byles gave evidence in the trial, describing the fight in Al Amarah that was to fuel Mansha's desire for revenge. From behind a screen, Cpl Byles told the jury: "I had two choices: stay there and be cut to pieces or put down concentrated fire and attack the positions, which is what I did. There were a number of gunmen. Some were pointing weapons at me. "I had to identify those that posed the greatest threat to me. I had to neutralise the gunmen. Myself and my team captured about eight gunmen and killed about 20 officially and 16 unofficially." Anti-terrorist and firearms officers arrested Mansha in March last year. His fingerprints were found on the newspaper article about Cpl Byles, but he said most of the items found in his flat were for research purposes only. He said he was helping a journalist friend. At his flat in south-east London the market stall holder also had in his possession "extremely distasteful and virulent" anti-western DVDs, the court heard. [Human rights] [Double standards]
• A Junior Aide Had a Big Role in Terror Policy
  By TIM GOLDEN Published: December 23, 2005 Moments after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, lawyers in the Justice Department's elite Office of Legal Counsel began crowding into the office of one of the agency's newest deputies, John C. Yoo, to watch the horror unfold on his television set.
  "We all stood around watching this event, and he just seemed very calm, like he wasn't going to let these terrorists stop him from doing his work," recalled Robert J. Delahunty, a friend of Mr. Yoo's who worked in the office.
  Mr. Yoo is often identified as the most aggressive among a group of conservative legal scholars who have challenged the importance of international law in the American legal system. But his signature contributions to the policies of the Bush administration have had more to do with his forceful assertion of wide presidential powers in wartime. While Mr. Yoo has become almost famous for some of his writings - the refutation of both his academic and government work has become almost a cottage industry among more liberal legal scholars and human rights lawyers - much less is known about how he came to wield the remarkable influence he had after Sept. 11 on issues related to terrorism.
  By then, Mr. Yoo already thought of himself as solidly conservative. He had grown up with anticommunist parents who left their native South Korea for Philadelphia shortly after Mr. Yoo was born in 1967, and had honed his political views while an undergraduate at Harvard. [Diaspora]
• U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians
  Eyewitnesses Cite Scores Killed in Marine Offensive in Western Iraq By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, December 24, 2005; A01
  RAMADI, Iraq -- U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military. Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.
• Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
  By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN Published: December 24, 2005 WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
  The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said. As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.
• Capitol's Pariah on Immigration Is Now a Power
  By RACHEL L. SWARNS Published: December 24, 2005 DENVER, Dec. 21 - For nearly a decade, Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, has been dismissed by his critics as little more than an angry man with a microphone, a lonely figure who rails against immigration and battles his own president and party.
  So radical were his proposals - calling for a fence along the United States border with Canada, for instance - and so fierce were his attacks on fellow Republicans who did not share his views that many of his colleagues tried to avoid him. Mr. Tancredo said Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had told him not "to darken the doorstep of the White House." But last week, the man denounced by critics on the left and on the right suddenly emerged as an influential lawmaker. Pressured by conservative constituents angered by the continuing flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, Republicans rallied around Mr. Tancredo to defy the president and produce the toughest immigration legislation in more than a decade.
• Stars turn backs on America's troops in Iraq
  · Danger and anti-war stance keep celebrities away · Shows now depend on Christian hip-hop groups Jamie Wilson in Washington Saturday December 24, 2005 The Guardian
  During world war two American troops away from home for Christmas were entertained by Marlene Dietrich, Bing Crosby and the Marx Brothers. Even in Vietnam Bob Hope was guaranteed to put in an appearance. But soldiers in Iraq are more likely to get a show from a Christian hip-hop group, a country singer you have probably never heard of and two cheerleaders for the Dallas Cowboys. Just as the seemingly intractable nature of the war has led to a growing recruitment crisis, so the United Services Organisation, which has been putting on shows for the troops since the second world war, is struggling to get celebrities to sign up for even a short tour of duty.
• U.S., Citing Abuse in Iraqi Prisons, Holds Detainees
  By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER Published: December 25, 2005 WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 - The commander of American-run prisons in Iraq says the military will not turn over any detainees or detention centers to Iraqi jailers until American officials are satisfied that the Iraqis are meeting United States standards for the care and custody of detainees.
• Tough Stance, Tougher Fines: Union Leader Is in a Corner
  By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Published: December 22, 2005
  When Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers' local, defiantly announced a strike, he proclaimed that his union was taking a proud stand against the concessions that employers had demanded nationwide.
  But Mr. Toussaint has quickly discovered that engaging in an illegal walkout can leave a union with a weak hand. His union faces a $1 million fine for each day on strike, a state judge is threatening to throw him in jail and thousands of individual strikers stand to lose two days' pay for each day out. Not only that, but the mayor, the governor and editorial writers are denouncing the union as greedy and showing contempt for the law. The front page of The New York Post screamed, "You Rats." [Human rights] [Media]
• File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under 'Urban Myths'
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 22, 2005; A02
  President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device. The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president. But it appears to be an urban myth.
• Dutch Bank Fined for Iran, Libya Transactions
  $80 Million Levied For Foreign Dealings, Money Laundering
  By Paul Blustein Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 20, 2005; D01 Federal and state financial regulators announced yesterday that they are levying $80 million in fines against ABN Amro Bank NV, a giant Dutch lender, for violating money-laundering laws and sanctions restricting dealings with Iran and Libya. The fines rank among the largest penalties ever imposed on a bank, according to Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury, although some of the other major fines have involved different types of violations. The severity of the fines is emblematic of the emphasis that the federal government has placed since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on investigating financial institutions' transactions with countries and firms suspected of having links to terrorists. Documents released by the regulators did not allege that the money involved was used to bankroll terrorism. But they revealed that ABN Amro's branch in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, falsified various payments processed at branches in the United States to hide the involvement of Bank Melli Iran, an Iranian government bank, and the Arab Bank for Investment and Foreign Trade, which is partially owned by the Libyan government. [Sanctions] [Imperialism]
• Beleaguered Bush steps up PR blitz with live address
  · Quitting Iraq would be a mistake, Americans told · Spying revelations further hit president's poll ratings Jamie Wilson in Washington Monday December 19, 2005 The Guardian
  George Bush last night sought to reclaim the initiative after a bruising weekend in which the president was forced to admit that he secretly ordered a spying programme to eavesdrop on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists, and revelations that the US operated a secret prison in Afghanistan. According to early excerpts released by the White House, Mr Bush used a live TV address - his first from the Oval Office since he announced the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 - to tout last Thursday's elections there as a hopeful sign of progress in the war-torn country. "This election will not mean the end of violence", the president said, but it did mean that America "has an ally of growing strength in the fight against terror".
  The public relations blitz included a surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday by Dick Cheney in which the vice-president also declared that quitting Iraq was not an option. But even as Mr Cheney toured the capital, a string of attacks killed up to two dozen people. Mr Cheney, who predicted before the war that Iraqis would greet Americans as liberators, arrived in Iraq amid a shroud of secrecy and extremely tight security. Even Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said he was surprised when he showed up for what he thought was a meeting with the US ambassador only to find Mr Cheney waiting to greet him. The vice-president flew around the Baghdad area in a pack of heavily armed Blackhawk helicopters. [Sovereignty] [Imperialism]
• Victory in Iraq
  Paul Rogers 15 - 12 - 2005 The Washington neo-conservatives' new mantra for counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq - "clear, hold, build" - ignores the facts on the ground.
  A clash of views about what to do in Iraq has exploded in Washington in the past month. The advocates of withdrawal are making the running, but there remains a powerful body of opinion that believes victory is possible. Its proponents are well represented in the neo-conservative wing of Washington politics and particularly in the neocon house journal, the Weekly Standard. The views expressed in such circles deserve serious analysis, both for their own sake and because they shed an interesting light on the nature of the evolving US strategy in Iraq. The neocons are facing unlikely as well as familiar opponents. The former include the veteran Pennsylvania congressman Jack Murtha who served as a marine in Vietnam and has a long track record as a defence "hawk"; this made his 17 November speech calling for the administration to timetable a withdrawal from Iraq particularly compelling and difficult to counter (see "The Iraq illusion", 1 December 2005). This has not stopped the two senior politicians in Washington from trying. Dick Cheney made a vigorous response in his own speech of 17 November, and again at the American Enterprise Institute on 21 November; these were followed by George W Bush's address at the US naval academy at Annapolis on 30 November (the first of a series of four) which launched the Pentagon's new Iraq document, the National Strategy for Victory.
• Global trade riots rock Hong Kong
  Police fight running battles with protesters and break up demos with tear gas as WTO negotiations reach climax
  Tom Burgis and Jonathan Watts in Hong Kong Sunday December 18, 2005 The Observer
  Hong Kong was hit by its most violent street clashes in more than 30 years last night as riot police fought running battles with protesters on the penultimate day of World Trade Organisation talks. While negotiators inside the conference hall struggled to agree to a watered-down compromise on the future of global commerce, demonstrators outside ratcheted up their attempt to derail a deal that they believe sells poor countries short. The result was the fiercest fighting this normally sedate commercial city has seen since the 1960s. Police Commissioner Dick Lee said 41 people - including five police - were injured, but only two of them needed to be kept in hospital. Lee said police have detained 900 people and were determining whether to formally arrest them. 'If necessary we will make arrests. We will not let them go easily,' he said.
  Police used water cannon, tear gas and pepper spray to repulse protesters - mostly Korean farmers - who tried to break through their lines with iron bars, wooden poles and battering rams made from steel security barriers.
• Losing One's Nerve in Iraq
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 175, Dec. 15, 2005 In response to the ever-growing sense that the United States is doing poorly in Iraq, indeed in the view of many is actually losing the war, the U.S. government has launched a campaign to persuade everyone that this is not so. In November, 2005, the U.S. National Security Council published, with great fanfare, a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." And President Bush has been pushing its line vociferously in public speeches. What this document argues is that victory is occurring, but occurring in stages, that victory is a vital U.S. interest, that the U.S. has a quite clear strategy for victory, but that this victory will take time. The key sentence in this wordy document, which evades all concrete analysis of what is actually going on, is a quote from President Bush's speech on Oct. 6, 2005: "In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve, and we will win that victory." We will keep our nerve, says Bush. But his Rasputin, Vice-President Cheney, is not so sure, since he constantly asserts that U.S. critics of the Bush administration, however mild their criticism, are undermining this "nerve" and risk making the U.S. lose its resolve. The number of Republican Congressmen and Senators who are worried that the voters have already lost their "nerve" and might vote against them seems to be increasing at a very rapid pace, and seems to be having a great impact on the "nerve" of these Republican politicians. When Rep. John Murtha, ex-Marine and longtime stalwart hawk, called for pulling out of Iraq, most commentators felt he was the unofficial voice of large numbers of senior military officers who were unable to voice their concerns publicly. Is this loss of their nerve? Neither Murtha nor the hidden senior military officers would define it this way. They see a situation in which the U.S. will not at all be able to win the kind of victory Bush is talking about, and by staying in Iraq they believe that the U.S. armed forces are being weakened as a military force able to do its work elsewhere in the world. They want to cut their losses before the U.S. armed forces lose even more.
  And finally, among winners and losers, more attention is being paid by observers today to the possibility that the big winner will be Iran.
  Do not ask for whom the bell tolls in Iraq. They toll for George W. Bush, and the United States.
• From APEC to WTO: trajectories of protest in Korea and East Asia
  By Jamie Doucette and Owen Miller
  [Japan Focus 12 December 2005]
  Angry protests in Busan, South Korea during an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference there in November have alarmed Hong Kong police preparing for a mid-December World Trade Organization ministerial conference. Hong Kong police fear that the some of the groups who showed up to protest APEC may also bring strident street protests to Hong Kong. This article examines some of the trajectories of protest apparent at the APEC events by looking more closely at the national and international dynamics of Korean activism, revealing growing coordination between workers, farmers and anti-war activists, and the implications for the Hong Kong meeting.
• Hong Kong on high alert as thousands of protesters fly in
  Jonathan Watts in Hong Kong Monday December 12, 2005 The Guardian
  Hong Kong was braced yesterday for its biggest security operation since the handover from British rule in 1997 as thousands of international protesters began flying in to try to derail the World Trade Organisation summit later this week. To prevent a repeat of the violence that disrupted the last two summits in Seattle and Cancún, 9,000 police have been drafted in to man the barricades around the harbourside convention centre, where the talks will take place, and patrol shopping and financial districts, which are considered potential targets for anti- globalisation radicals.
  In Wan Chai, the entertainment district closest to the venue, manhole covers have been welded into place so they cannot be used as missiles and overhead walkways have been covered in wire mesh so nothing can be thrown on to the streets. Hospitals are on standby and all leave has been cancelled. Prison inmates have been relocated so that police have the space to detain large numbers of people. Hopes are scarcely more optimistic for the action inside the vast convention centre, used for the 1997 handover, where 6,000 delegates will gather tomorrow to thrash out the global trade disputes that have gridlocked the latest WTO round. Few expect anything more than incremental progress; at worst, some fear a repeat of the deadlock that undermined the last summit at Cancún in 2003.
  Korean farmers, who have been in the frontline of previous WTO protests, say the authorities put pressure on hotels to refuse them rooms, but more than 1,000 are expected to fly in today. They say the liberalisation of the rice market has driven several farmers to suicide, including Lee Kyung-hae, who killed himself at the height of the demonstration in Cancún
• Open door
  The readers' editor on ... a complaint about a controversial correction Ian Mayes Monday December 12, 2005 The Guardian It is with considerable reluctance that I return to the subject of the Guardian and Noam Chomsky and one of the most difficult complaints I have had to deal with in my eight years as readers' editor of the paper. I do so because the long correction which I and those directly involved certainly thought at the time had fairly resolved the matter, is itself now being called into question by others. [Media]
• splendid prizes of an Indian career
  Monday December 10, 1855 The Guardian From a Private Correspondent: Very few persons in London, and scarcely one of your readers perhaps, have ever paid a visit to the East India Company's military seminary, at Addiscombe. Twice a year the chairman and directors issue their invitations to a few of their private friends, to distinguished Indian officers who may happen to be in this country, and to the ministerial functionaries charged with Indian affairs, requesting their presence at the half-yearly examination of the cadets. Yesterday I had the honour to be included among the invitations.
  What Addiscombe is for the Indian army, the college of Haileybury (in Hertfordshire) has been for the civil service, viz the nursery from which the East India Company draws its supplies of young men who administer law and justice among millions of Hindoos. But, while Addiscombe escaped intact from the reforming provisions of the recent East India Act, the fiat went out against Haileybury, which, in a year or two, when present nominations have expired, will be shut up. The government bill, as originally brought in, contained a clause throwing open all the nominations to the Indian army, as well as to the civil service, to public competition. But it was represented to the ministry that, if the nominations to Addiscombe were thrown open, young Hindoos or Mahometans might be sent over to compete for them, and having once gained commissions in the Indian army, might rise to high rank and commands therein. It seemed to be assumed that English rule is not so popular in India, that a Hindoo Napoleon can be safely trusted with the command of any large force of Sepoys [Imperialism]
• The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it
  By ignoring past abuses, opponents of torture are in danger of pushing it back into the shadows instead of abolishing it Naomi Klein Saturday December 10, 2005 The Guardian It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City. It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture". It is here in Panama, and later at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found
• Elections Could Tilt Latin America Further to the Left
  By JUAN FORERO Published: December 10, 2005 MOROCHATA, Bolivia - In perhaps the quirkiest, most colorful of the many presidential campaigns gathering momentum in Latin America, Evo Morales, the Aymara Indian leader turned congressman, arrived in this mountain hamlet on a recent day, got out of his car a mile up the road and strode in like a conquering hero.
  Mr. Morales, 46, a former llama herder and coca farmer who has a slight lead in the polls for the election on Dec. 18, offers what may be the most radical vision in Latin America, much to the dismay of the Bush administration. But the sentiment extends beyond Bolivia. Starting on Dec. 11 in Chile, voters in 11 countries will participate in a series of presidential elections over the next year that could take Latin America further to the left than it already is. Since a bombastic army colonel, Hugo Chávez, won office in Venezuela in 1998, three-quarters of South America has shifted to the left, though most countries are led by pragmatic presidents like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and N éstor Kirchner in Argentina. [Media]
• Poland Links Bid For U.S. Aid to Presence in Iraq
  Money Sought to Modernize Forces By Bradley GrahamWashington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A13 Poland has asked for additional U.S. military assistance to modernize its own forces as it considers whether to extend the presence of Polish troops in Iraq next year, according to Polish and U.S. officials. Although Warsaw has stopped short of conditioning its Iraq decision on the request for aid, it has made it clear that the two are linked, saying the $600 million it has spent on the Iraq operation has siphoned funds from plans to upgrade its own military.
• Hegemonic terror
  CHANDRA MUZAFFAR
  FOR the first time in its history, the United States of America has invaded, conquered and occupied an Arab country. Of course, other western colonial powers - notably Britain, France and Italy - had in an earlier era conquered and occupied Arab lands. The US itself has military bases in, and military relationships with, a number of Arab states today, but it had never conquered or occupied any state as such.
  This compels us to ask a few important questions: Why did the US, aided and abetted by its close ally Britain, conquer and occupy Iraq? Is there any basis at all to the reasons given by the Anglo-American invaders for their conquest and occupation? What are the factors which facilitated their conquest and occupation? How will the US or more accurately, Washington, maintain its power in Iraq? Will there be resistance to American power in Iraq and how will it manifest itself? What will be the impact of American power in Iraq, upon the rest of the Arab world and upon the Middle East as a whole? How will the Iraqi situation affect the international system and global politics?
  THE GREAT GAME a symposium on the fallouts of the war on Iraq July 2003 Seminar journal, New Delhi [Imperialism]
• Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
  Propaganda
  By JEFF GERTH Published: December 11, 2005
  The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company. In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.
  The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden. "We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. [Media] [Disinformation][Propaganda]
• Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race, Dies at 89
  By FRANCIS X. CLINES Published: December 11, 2005 Eugene J. McCarthy, the sardonic Senate dove who stunned the nation by upending President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election drive amid the Vietnam War turmoil of 1968, died early yesterday. He was 89. A courtly, sharp-witted presence in capital politics for half a century, Mr. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, died in his sleep at an assisted-living home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where he had lived for the last several years.
• U.S. Won't Join in Binding Climate Talks
  Administration Agrees to Separate Dialogue By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A01 MONTREAL, Dec. 10 -- Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.
• Cloud cast over rendition flights
  Richard Norton-Taylor Friday December 9, 2005 The Guardian The ringing phrases in the law lords' judgment denouncing torture are in striking contrast to statements by President Bush and his legal advisers, notwithstanding more robust comments this week by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. In this respect, at least, yesterday's ruling has a bearing on the running dispute over the CIA practice of "rendition" - transfer of terrorist suspects to camps and interrogation centres where they are more likely than not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, banned by international conventions and declarations which were approvingly cited in yesterday's judgments.
  The law lords also referred to judgments in American courts. They referred to the UN convention which says torture includes, for example, "any act by which severe suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted" - a lower threshold than that which has been used by the Bush administration.
• Art, Truth and Politics
  HAROLD PINTER Editor's Note: The following is the full text of Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture, which the ailing playwright delivered by video from London December 7 to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. //..
  As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in forty-five minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11, 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it. But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here. Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified. But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked. [Double standards] [Media] [Imperialism]
• Saddam & Secret Witnesses
  By Robert Parry December 8, 2005 Some of the worst journalistic abuses come when news organizations deal with accusations against a pariah. Normal standards of skepticism are set aside because the subject lacks influential defenders or is despised by those in power, so pretty much anything goes. This unwritten rule of journalism is one back story of the Iraq War. Given how unsavory Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein was, American journalists felt no inhibitions about following the White House's lead and imputing the worst conceivable behavior to him. Indeed, doing so, burnished a reporter's reputation for toughness and patriotism, a win-win for the journalist. But the danger to the country was that as journalism morphed into propaganda, the American people could be more easily misled into wrongheaded decisions and into violations of longstanding principles. Without doubt, the U.S. news media's animosity toward Hussein gave an emotional boost to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Now, the latest example of the U.S. media's anti-Hussein blinders is occurring in plain sight during his trial for the slaughter of more than 140 men and boys in the Iraqi village of Dujail after a 1982 ambush that sought to kill him. [Media] [Double standards]
• Passionate Pinter's devastating assault on US foreign policy
  Shades of Beckett as ailing playwright delivers powerful Nobel lecture
  Michael Billington Thursday December 8, 2005 The Guardian
  There was something oddly Beckettian about Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture, which was broadcast yesterday by More4, and which even now is blazing its way across the world's media. It was Beckettian in that Pinter sat in a wheelchair, with a rug over his knees and framed by an image of his younger self, delivering his sombre message: memories of Hamm in Beckett's Endgame came to mind. But if Pinter's frailty was occasionally visible, there was nothing ailing about his passionate and astonishing speech, which mixed moral vigour with forensic detail.
  At one point, for instance, Pinter argued that "the United States supported and in many cases engendered every rightwing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the second world war". He then proceeded to reel off examples. But the clincher came when Pinter, with deadpan irony, said: "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." In a few sharp sentences, Pinter pinned down the willed indifference of the media to publicly recorded events. He also showed how language is devalued by the constant appeal of US presidents to "the American people". This was argument by devastating example. As Pinter repeated the lulling mantra, he proved his point that "The words "the American people" provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance." Thus Pinter brilliantly used a rhetorical device to demolish political rhetoric. [Media]
• Skepticism Seems to Erode Europeans' Faith in Rice
  By RICHARD BERNSTEIN Published: December 7, 2005 BERLIN, Dec. 6 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did what was expected, many people in Europe said Tuesday, after her meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German officials. She gave reassurances that the United States would not tolerate torture and, while not admitting mistakes, promised to correct any that had been made. She accompanied that with an impassioned argument for aggressive intelligence gathering, within the law, as an indispensable means of saving lives endangered by an unusually dangerous and unscrupulous foe. Did anybody believe her on this continent, aroused as rarely before by a raft of reports about secret prisons, C.I.A. flights, allegations of torture and of "renditions," or transfers, of prisoners to third countries so they can be tortured there? "Yes, I did," Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a conservative member of the German Parliament, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "The thing I believe is that the United States does obey international law, and Mrs. Merkel said that she believes it too." Not everybody here is of that view, to say the least. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a more sudden and thorough tarnishing of the Bush administration's credibility than the one taking place here right now.
• Syria Attacks Evidence as U.N. Case Turns More Bizarre
  By MICHAEL SLACKMAN Published: December 7, 2005 DAMASCUS, Syria, Dec. 6 - The United Nations investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, is beginning to show some cracks: one witness is dead, another is in jail and still another has recanted his testimony with a fantastic story of abduction, drugging and bribery.
  In a case that has begun to sound more and more like a fictional spy thriller, with charges of Soviet-style intimidation tactics and a witness who died when his car ran off a road, the issue of witness credibility has risen to the forefront. While it is too soon to draw any firm conclusions on how the new developments will affect the investigation, they have at least raised questions about the validity of crucial evidence supporting the charge that the Syrian state was responsible for Mr. Hariri's assassination, according to Western diplomats based in Syria and a draft of an interim report by the United Nations investigator, Detlev Mehlis.
• Bin Laden, Deconstructed
  by BRUCE LAWRENCE [posted online on November 30, 2005]
  Editor's Note: The following essay is excerpted from Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Ladin, an examination of bin Laden's utterances edited by Bruce Lawrence and translated by James Howarth. It is published with permission of Verso Books.
  Although Osama bin Laden has become a legendary figure in the West, official pressures have ensured that, for the most part, his voice has been tacitly censored, as if to hear it clearly and without cuts or interruption would be too dangerous. This does not mean that bin Laden's messages have reached no audience. But they have done so by flying below the radar screen of official--government and media--discourse about the war on terror, and entering an alternative sphere, till now largely confined to Arabic speakers.
  For millions of Muslims around the world, including many who have no sympathy with terrorism, bin Laden is a heroic figure. His worldwide charisma is based not just on his success in so far eluding Americans and their allies, exhilarating as that may be for many ordinary Muslims. It is because his personal reputation for probity, austerity, dignity and courage contrasts so starkly with the mismanagement, bordering on incompetence, of most Arab regimes. Unlike the latter, bin Laden has demonstrated that he can forego the temptations of wealth, that he dares to strike powerful wrongdoers and that he refuses to bend before superior might.
  Objectively speaking, bin Laden is waging a war against what many--admirers as well as critics--now call the American empire. But it is crucial to note that he himself never uses this vocabulary. The word "imperialism" does not occur once in any of the messages he has sent out. He defines the enemy differently. For him, jihad is aimed not at an imperium but at "global unbelief." Again and again, his texts return to this fundamental dichotomy. The war is a religious war. It subsumes a political war, which he can wage with terms appropriate to it, as he demonstrates in his addresses to the peoples of Europe or of America. Yet the battle in the end is one of faith. [Terrorism] [Imperialism]
• Crowd Attacks Allawi In Najaf
  Melee Was Attempt To Assassinate Him, Iraqi Ex-Leader Says By Jonathan Finer and Saad Sarhan Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, December 5, 2005; Page A18
  BAGHDAD, Dec. 4 -- A crowd of angry men, some wielding knives, others throwing shoes or bricks, attacked an entourage led by former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf on Sunday, as gunfire echoed in the area. Allawi later described the melee as an "assassination attempt."
• Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
  German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition' By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page A01
  In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation. Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations. [Terrorism]
• Blast in Pakistan Kills Al Qaeda Commander
  Figure Reportedly Hit by U.S. Missile Strike By Craig Whitlock and Kamran Khan Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page A01
  BERLIN, Dec. 3 -- The killing of an al Qaeda commander in a U.S.-led operation in a remote corner of Pakistan marks an advance in the struggle to locate and eliminate the network's leadership, which has managed to replenish its ranks after suffering key losses in recent years, counterterrorism officials and experts said Saturday. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said that Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed Thursday in an explosion in a tribal area along the border with Afghanistan. Although there were conflicting reports about the details of Rabia's death, Pakistani intelligence sources said U.S. operatives killed him and four others with a missile fired by an unmanned Predator drone. [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Sovereignty]
• Military Admits Planting News in Iraq
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: December 3, 2005 WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The military acknowledged Friday in a briefing for a ranking Senate Republican that news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified. [Media][Disinformation]
• Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News
  Possible 'Improprieties' to Be Investigated By Josh White and Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, December 3, 2005; Page A01
  The U.S. military command in Baghdad acknowledged for the first time yesterday that it has paid Iraqi newspapers to carry positive news about U.S. efforts in Iraq, but officials characterized the payments as part of a legitimate campaign to counter insurgents' misinformation. [Media] [Disinformation]
• Transcript of Wilkerson interview
  Col Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, was interviewed by Carolyn Quinn for the BBC's R4 Today programme. Here is a transcript of the interview.
• The Iraq illusion
  Paul Rogers 1 - 12 - 2005
  The mass insurgent assault in Ramadi, one day after George W Bush predicted "victory in Iraq", indicates the gap between Washington fantasies and Iraqi facts.
  George W Bush's speech at the United States naval academy at Annapolis on 30 November - the first of a series of speeches from the president and other senior administration figures over the next few days - reaffirmed his determination to stay the course in Iraq. It coincides with the publication of a National Strategy for Victory which both echoes Bush's assertion that the US will not "cut and run" from Iraq while implying that troop withdrawals will start in 2006.
  This sustained media and public offensive is in response to a marked decrease in domestic support for the war. It is also the opening phase of a campaign that will last until the Congressional mid-sessional elections in November 2006. The tenor of the message from Washington is twofold - that the Iraq war can and will be won; and that it is a core part of the "war on terror", connected directly to 9/11. Whether it will have the desired domestic impact is still open to question; what can be analysed is its relation to the situation the US currently faces, in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. As so often happens, an optimistic assessment from Washington has been followed almost at once by violent developments in Iraq.
• Cheney's Trouble with the Truth
  ROBERT SCHEER
  The Nation 23 November 205
  You've got to hand it to Dick Cheney; no other modern politician has come so close to perfecting the theater of the absurd. Even as he protests his innocence of lying about matters of state, he lies about matters of state. [Evidence] [Disinformation]
• The French Riots: Rebellion of the Underclass
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 174, Dec. 1, 2005
  France had a rebellion of its underclass in November 2005 that lasted for about two weeks. Groups of young people across France, mostly of North African or Black African descent, set fires to cars and hurled rocks at police. In some ways, this was the kind of uprising that has been occurring throughout the world in recent decades. But it also had particular French explanations. It exploded like a phoenix. It has been suppressed by the force of the state. It is far from over.
  It always amazes me that people are surprised when underclasses rebel. The surprising thing is that they do not do it more often.
  France defines itself as the country of universal values, where discrimination cannot exist because everyone can become a French person if they're ready to integrate fully. The reality is that France has always (yes, I said always) been a country of immigration. In the days of the Ancien Régime and even in the first half of the nineteenth century, the non-French speakers (50% up to the French Revolution) migrated to Paris and other northern cities. Later it was the Italians, the Belgians, and the Corsicans. The came the Poles, and then the Portuguese and Spaniards. And in the last 40 years or so, massively the North Africans, the Black Africans, and the Chinese from what was formerly French Indochina. France is a multicultural country par excellence still living the Jacobin dream of uniformity.
• Uproar in House as Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout
  Published: November 19, 2005 WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - Republicans and Democrats shouted, howled and slung insults on the House floor on Friday as a debate over whether to withdraw American troops from Iraq descended into a fury over President Bush's handling of the war and a leading Democrat's call to bring the troops home.
• The Rose That Is a Thorn in Chavez's Side
  By JUAN FORERO Published: November 19, 2005 CARACAS, Venezuela SHE'S the Venezuelan government's most detested adversary, a young woman with a quick wit and machine-gun-fast delivery who often appears in Washington or Madrid to denounce what she calls the erosion of democracy under President Hugo Chavez. In a highly polarized country, Maria Corina Machado has emerged as perhaps the most divisive figure after Mr. Chavez, a woman who is either beloved or reviled.
  Ms. Machado does not hide her close relations with Washington, which has provided financial aid to Sumate, the anti-Chavez, election-monitoring organization she helps run. In May, she infuriated the government when she met with President Bush at the White House, and she further antagonized officials in September by announcing that Sumate had received a fresh infusion of $107,000 from Washington. [Camouflage] [Imperialism]
• Cheney 'may be guilty of war crime'
  · Vice-president accused of backing torture · Claims on BBC by former insider add to Bush's woes
  Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday November 30, 2005 The Guardian
  Vice-president Dick Cheney's burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a former senior US state department official said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, singled out Mr Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBC's Today programme. Mr Wilkerson said that in an internal administration debate over whether to abide by the Geneva conventions in the treatment of detainees, Mr Cheney led the argument "that essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions".
  Asked whether the vice-president was guilty of a war crime, Mr Wilkerson replied: "Well, that's an interesting question - it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that it is ... an international crime as well." In the context of other remarks it appeared he was using the word "terror" to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners.
• Rumsfeld's War On 'Insurgents'
  By Dana Milbank Wednesday, November 30, 2005; Page A18 Last weekend, while other Americans were watching football and eating leftover turkey, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ended the Iraqi insurgency. It was easy, really: He declared that the insurgents would, henceforth, no longer be called insurgents.
  ."Over the weekend, I thought to myself, 'You know, that gives them a greater legitimacy than they seem to merit,' " Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon briefing yesterday, said of his ban on the I- word. "It was an epiphany," he added, throwing his hands in the air. Encouraging reporters to consult their dictionaries, the defense secretary said: "These people aren't trying to promote something other than disorder, and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate and then spread it around the world. This is a group of people who don't merit the word 'insurgency,' I think." Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, standing at Rumsfeld's side, evidently didn't get the memo about the wording change. Describing combat in Iraq, he paused and said, "I have to use the word 'insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now." " 'Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government' -- how's that?" Rumsfeld proposed. "What the secretary said," Pace continued, to laughter [Spin]
• Waiting for Havana
  By LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA Published: November 27, 2005 ON the two-hour ride from Havana to Varadero, on an expressway where light traffic rolls along with only an occasional billboard to disturb the view, you see nothing but palm-covered hills, the lapping aqua sea crashing on craggy shores, deep valleys shrouded in mist, and Matanzas, a historic onetime sugar-rich town, along a sun-sparkling bay. Along the rest of the road, there is only a nearly uninhabited countryside, and breathtaking views of the ocean on the north and vales and mountains on the south.
  It doesn't take much effort to imagine cliffside resorts here, with sweeping golf courses, sprawling ranches, and roadside restaurants sprinkled up and down the coast. Cuba is a large island, three-quarters the size of Florida, and aside from crowded hot spots like Havana and Varadero and a handful of colonial cities and resorts, it is largely underdeveloped - making it a sleeping giant of Caribbean tourism.
  Cuba, with its magnificent, unspoiled beauty, seduces in many ways. To American business executives, it is an untapped market of 12 million people eager for American goods. To American hoteliers and cruise ship executives, it represents a tantalizing glimpse of the future - of future ports for their passengers, of future resorts for their customers. To American tourists, it represents the taste of a forbidden fruit - of a land that has been off limits since 1961.
  And they are all waiting for the one thing they believe will all but certainly make their dreams come true: the end of Fidel Castro.
• Thailand's endemic insurgency
  Jan McGirk 28 - 11 - 2005 Muslim-majority southern Thailand is burning. Jan McGirk, in Bangkok, dissects the heart of a spreading conflict. Old Siam used to be a cosmopolitan kingdom, where the nobles took great pride in the diversity of its people. Their god-king granted protection to all his subjects, including people descended from ethnic Lao, Mon or Khmer bloodlines, as well as the wealthy Thai Chinese and immigrant traders from India. But the modern designation, Thailand, translates literally as the "homeland for Thais". The decision to make that name change was hastily taken in a fit of nationalism in the approach to the second world war, during which Bangkok went on to ally with the Japanese in order to secure its precarious independence and protect itself from occupation. There was only a ten-minute discussion before the radical rebranding of Siam to Thailand in 1939. Only the justice minister, Thamrong Nawasawat, objected: he argued that the new name would rankle with "other races" in the kingdom, because non-Thais would feel they were not full members of society. He recalled the position of the ethnic Malays of Pattani, an autonomous Muslim sultanate which was formally annexed by Siam in 1909. Nawasawat's lone voice was prescient
• Bush blunders become bestseller
  Mr Bush's gaffes: Is poor education the cause? George W Bush "for some reason speaks English as if it's a second language", says Jacob Weisberg. Mr Weisberg should know. The journalist for the online magazine Slate has compiled a book of the tongue-tied president's gaffes, George W. Bushisms: The Slate Book of The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President. I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating It includes such gems as: "Families is where our nation finds home, where wings take dream."
• Iraq War Debate Eclipses All Other Issues
  GOP Flounders as Bush's Popularity Falls; Democrats Struggle for a Voice By Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page A01
  After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are suddenly confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. The start hasn't been pretty. Political stunts by both parties have created an air of acrimony that is infecting the parties' entire agendas. The bitterness reached a new high -- or low -- on Friday when House Republicans forced a late-night vote on a resolution for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces.
  The resolution failed, 403 to 3, but only after members nearly came to blows when a GOP newcomer suggested a veteran Democratic military hawk was a coward.

• Rapid Pullout From Iraq Urged by Key Democrat
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: November 18, 2005 WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - The partisan furor over the Iraq war ratcheted up sharply on Capitol Hill on Thursday, as an influential House Democrat on military matters called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops and Republicans escalated their attacks against the Bush administration's critics.
  Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam combat veteran who voted for the Iraq war, said that after more than two years of combat, American forces had united a disparate array of insurgents in a seemingly endless cycle of violence that was impeding Iraq's progress toward stability and self-governance. He said the 153,000 American troops in Iraq should be pulled out within six months. "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. It is time to bring them home," Mr. Murtha said, at times choking back tears. Mr. Murtha's proposal, which goes well beyond the phased withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq that other moderate Democrats have proposed, stunned many Republicans who quickly held their own news conference to criticize the plan. [President Bush, in South Korea, continued on Friday to be questioned by reporters about the debate over Iraq. His press secretary issued an unusually blistering statement responding to Mr. Murtha's call for a pullout, declaring that the Democrat was "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party." Page A16.]
• From Tapes, a Chilling Voice of Islamic Radicalism in Europe
  By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: November 18, 2005 MILAN - Playing an Internet video one evening last year, an Egyptian radical living in Milan reveled as the head of an American, Nicholas Berg, was sawed off by his Iraqi captors.
  "Go to hell, enemy of God!" shouted the man, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, as Mr. Berg's screams were broadcast. "Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! If I had been there, I would have burned him to make him already feel what hell was like. Cut off his head! God is great! God is great!" Yahia Ragheh, the Egyptian would-be suicide bomber sitting by Mr. Ahmed's side, clearly felt uncomfortable. "Isn't it a sin?" he asked. "Who said that?" Mr. Ahmed shot back. "It is never a sin!" He added: "We hope that even their parents will come to the same end. Dogs, all of them, all of them. You simply need to be convinced when you make the decision." Unconvinced, Mr. Ragheh replied: "I think that it is a sin. I simply think it is a sin." The blunt exchange is contained in an 182-page official Italian police report that has not been made public, but is widely available in court circles and frames the judicial case against the two men. "The Madrid attack was my project, and those who died as martyrs were my dearest friends," Mr. Ahmed boasted in one intercepted conversation.
  He and Mr. Ragheh, his 22-year-old disciple, will be tried in Milan in January under a contentious law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States that makes association with an international terrorist network a crime [human rights] [Double standards]
• Europeans Probe Secret CIA Flights
  Questions Surround Possible Illegal Transfer of Terrorism Suspects
  By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 17, 2005; Page A22
  BERLIN, Nov. 16 -- Several European governments have opened investigations into a fleet of CIA- operated airplanes that have crisscrossed the continent hundreds of times in recent years. The aim is to determine whether U.S. officials secretly used local airports and military bases to transfer terrorism suspects under conditions that violate local and international treaties. [human rights]
• Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh: Iraq Confidential
  THE NATION posted October 26, 2005 (web only)
  EDITOR'S NOTE: Iraq is a nation on fire, a conflagration of America's making that threatens to consume everything the nation stands for. How did we get there? How do we get out? Can we get out? In this edited transcript of an October 19 public conversation sponsored by The Nation Institute at the New York Ethical Culture Society, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discuss how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve a hidden foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. The conversation was based on revelations in Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential, published by Nation Books. Hersh's most recent book is Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, published by HarperCollins.
• Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
  By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A01 A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress. The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated. [Corruption]
• US admits using white phosphorous in Falluja
  Jamie Wilson in Washington Wednesday November 16, 2005 The Guardian
  US forces yesterday made their clearest admission yet that white phosphorus was used as a weapon against insurgents in Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC last night that it had been used as "an incendiary weapon" during the assault last year on Falluja in 2004. Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable said the substance, which can be used to lay smokescreens but burns down to the bone in contact with skin, was not covered by international conventions on chemical weapons. But Paul Rodgers of the University of Bradford's Department of Peace Studies said the substance would probably fall into the category of chemical weapons if used directly against people. The Pentagon spokesman's comments also appeared to contradict the US ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, who denied in a letter to the Independent that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon. Mr Tuttle said: "US forces participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to use appropriate lawful conventional weapons against legitimate targets. US forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons." [Human rights] [cbw]
• Cartoon: Steve Bell on Britain's role in Afghanistan.
• Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: November 8, 2005 WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - In an apparent slip, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference what has long been secret: the amount of money the United States spends on its spy agencies. At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion. The number was reported Monday in U.S. News and World Report, whose national security reporter, Kevin Whitelaw, was among the hundreds of people in attendance during Ms. Graham's talk. "I thought, 'I can't believe she said that,' " Mr. Whitelaw said on Monday. "The government has spent so much time and energy arguing that it needs to remain classified." The figure itself comes as no great shock; most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at $40 billion. But the fact that Ms. Graham would say it in public is a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940's from being disclosed.
• The United States versus Latin America
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  No. 173, Nov. 15, 2005 The severe rebuff to Bush's diplomacy at the Summit of the Americas in Mar de la Plata, Argentina, November 4-5, was in some sense the culmination of almost two centuries of difficult relations between the United States and the rest of the Americas. It did not come out of nowhere, and it is by no means the end of the story which, from a U.S. point of view, is going downhill steadily.
• A Simple Message Of Hope And Peace
  Dalai Lama's Words To Washingtonians Transcend Politics
  By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 14, 2005; Page B02
  Gripping Cokes and cups of french fries, the three teenage girls seemed just the kind of fans who might flock to MCI Center any night for a Wizards game or a concert. But yesterday, the Jumbotron was flashing pictures of Tibetan monks in saffron robes. And the main attraction was the exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama laughs after being presented with a hat and robe from others from the Himalayas. In his speech at MCI Center, he exhibited much of the charm and humor that have endeared him to people worldwide. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post) "He's had such influence in the world. It's not like he's a rock star. It's something different," said Sara Rothleitner, 16, of Ellicott City. When the three teenagers learned that the Dalai Lama would be in Washington, "we jumped on it," said Constance Ferber, 16, of Towson, Md. In a city normally obsessed with more temporal forms of power, the 70-year-old spiritual leader received a fan-club greeting yesterday. About 16,000 people filled much of MCI Center to hear his talk, "Global Peace Through Compassion." Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House minority leader, introduced him and gushed over the chance "to breathe the same air, in the same room, as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama." As for His Holiness, he showed much of the charm that has endeared him to audiences around the world, joking, relaxing into a cross-legged position on a chair, and mixing topics both sacred and worldly. He talked of love and hate, of religion and ethics, of global peace and nuclear weapons.
• Wrestling With History Sometimes you have to fight the war you have, not the war you wish you had
  By David Von Drehle Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page W12
  If only he could show us the memo. "It's still classified, I suppose?" says Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, looking toward his assistant. Why the conflict that has cost 2,000 American lives may not be Donald Rumsfeld's No. 1 priority. "It's still classified," Lawrence DiRita replies, "along with a lot of the underlying planning." Rumsfeld nods, apparently disappointed. He is interested in sharing the memo because the memo, as he outlines it, demonstrates that his critics are utterly mistaken. He did not dash heedless and underprepared into Iraq. Rumsfeld foresaw the things that could go wrong -- and not just foresaw them, but wrote them up in a classically Rumsfeldian list, one brisk bullet point after another, 29 potential pitfalls in all. Then he distributed the memo at the highest levels, fed it into the super-secret planning process and personally walked the president through the warnings.
• Meyer reveals 'Blair's pygmies'
  Ewen MacAskill and Julian Glover Tuesday November 8, 2005 The Guardian
  Many of the British ministers who visited Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war were political pygmies who failed to win the respect of their US counterparts, according to the former British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer. In his memoirs, DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian, Sir Christopher is scathing about leading cabinet ministers such as the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the former defence secretary Geoff Hoon and the deputy prime minister, John Prescott. He expresses despair about ministers with direct responsibility for preparations for the Iraq war, saying that Mr Straw was intimidated and tongue-tied in the presence of administration officials.
• Australia foils 'catastrophic' terrorist chemical attack
  · 17 arrested in raids in Sydney and Melbourne · Railway stations thought to be likely target
  Bernard O'Riordan in Sydney Tuesday November 8, 2005 The Guardian Australian authorities believe they have foiled a major terrorist attack after arresting 17 people in overnight raids on homes in the country's two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. The arrests come less than a week after Prime Minister John Howard said he had received intelligence about a "terrorist threat" to Australia. Nine were arrested in Melbourne, including Abu Bakr, a radical cleric who has praised Osama bin Laden, while eight were held in Sydney in raids that began at 2.30am. At least 400 officers, combining federal agents and state police in New South Wales and Victoria, took part. The suspects had allegedly stockpiled material for a chemical attack, possibly on a railway station in either Sydney or Melbourne. (sic)
• Wilfred Burchett's Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist: Lessons from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Iraq
  By Stuart Macintyre
  [Japan Focus 7 November 2005]
  [The New York Times revealed on October 31, 2005 that an in-house historian of the US National Security Agency has investigated the August 4, 1964 'Tonkin Gulf Incident' that the US government used to escalate the Vietnam War. According to this official U.S. historian, what happened that fateful day was deliberately misrepresented by officials who quickly discovered important mistakes in their agency's real-time reporting but immediately covered them up. A non-existent 'attack' then became a lie that took the United States into a new war against North Vietnam, at a cost of 58,000 American lives and over a million Vietnamese. It now seems clear that not one but both of the most disastrous conflicts in U.S. history, those in Vietnam and Iraq, were sparked by US officials disseminating lies and convincing the American public to go to war. Indeed, according to the New York Times, the NSA historian's extensive analysis of the official dishonesty was scheduled for publication in 2002-03, but the work was withheld from the public once the case then being disseminated to take the US into war against Iraq (its 'weapons of mass destruction') was itself already becoming controversial. Among the earliest and most prominent Western opponents of the Vietnam War was the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who died in 1983. [Media]
• Blair's litany of failures on Iraq - ambassador's damning verdict
  Meyer says PM failed to exert any leverage on Bush and was seduced by US power Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill Monday November 7, 2005 The Guardian
  Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today. Sir Christopher, highly critical of Mr Blair's performance in the run-up to the war, argues the prime minister and his team were "seduced" by the proximity and glamour of US power and reluctant to negotiate conditions with George Bush for Britain's support for the war.
  He says Mr Blair failed to exploit his enormous leverage with Mr Bush not only to secure a precious delay but to plan for postwar Iraq. "We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise but the ace up our sleeve was that America did not want to go it alone. Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise." But Mr Blair did not have any appetite for bargaining with Mr Bush, according to Sir Christopher: "Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside President Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to Blair the Poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power. "But the high moral ground, and the pure white flame of unconditional support to an ally in service of an idea, have their disadvantages. They place your destiny in the hands of an ally. They fly above the tangled history of Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Turkomen and Assyrian. They discourage descent into the dull detail of tough and necessary bargaining: meat and drink to Margaret Thatcher but, so it seemed, uncongenial to Tony Blair."
• Guardian Fabricates Chomsky Quotes in Bid to Smear World's Number One Intellectual
  Storm Over Brockes' Fakery
  By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
  Counterpunch 5-6 November 2005
  After Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines issued their poll last month of the top intellectuals in the world I broached to Noam Chomsky the notion that CounterPunch might compile an alternative list. The plan was to dismiss FP/Prospect readers' pick of mostly lumpen non-thinkers in favor of real intellectuals like Levi-Strauss, or Baudrillard, or Laura Nader or Barbara Fields, or the Anderson Bros or Boris Kagarlitsky. Chomsky who featured in the poll as top intellectual, (with twice as many votes as the runner-up, Umberto Eco, to the evident consternation of much of the north-eastern US press which has mostly kept silent on the matter) wrote back in good humor, ridiculing the idea of such lists and putting forward as candidates his granddaughter in Nicaragua, or his granddaughter's cat. The subject soon grew wearisome and I went back to important matters such as how to keep the temperature in my pit under 80 degrees F, vital in the correct preparation of cold-smoked Coho salmon caught in Gray's Harbor, WA. But the pre-eminence of a genuinely radical thinker like Chomsky plainly irked New Labour types at the British daily, The Guardian. So they sent off an interviewer to do a razor job on the professor of linguistics at MIT. [Media]
• The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
  In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans By Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A01
  The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said. Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.
  Patriot Act Primer Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand. The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.
• U.S. Owes $208 Million To Iraq, U.N. Audit Finds
  By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A23 NEW YORK, Nov. 5 -- A U.N.-established international auditing board called on the United States to repay Iraq $208 million in disputed fees for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that received nearly $1.4 billion in contracts without having to compete for the delivery of fuel and the repair of Iraq's oil infrastructure. [Corruption] [Cheney]

• Galloway pledges to take fight to clear name into enemy territory
  · MP challenges accuser to debate in midwest base · Demand for perjury claim to be settled by court fight Ewen MacAskill Wednesday October 26, 2005 The Guardian
  George Galloway is considering taking his fight with Senator Norm Coleman to the Republican's heartland by booking a venue in Minnesota and challenging him to a debate. Mr Coleman is chairman of a senate permanent sub- committee on investigations that yesterday accused Mr Galloway of lying under oath about Saddam Hussein's multi-million pound oil-for food programme.
• Gore Vidal, Octocontrarian
  MARC COOPER ARTICLE | posted October 20, 2005 (November 7, 2005 issue)
  Gore Vidal remains one of the more prolific contemporary American writers and certainly one of the most politically outspoken. Shortly after his recent 80th-birthday celebration, Nation contributing editor Marc Cooper interviewed him in his Hollywood home. Herewith, a condensed version of that conversation. . --The Editors Q:?In the introduction to your new book, Imperial America, you begin by saying that the four sweetest words in the American lexicon are "I told you so." What were you gloating about? A:?Oh, everything. The principal bit of wisdom that I had to purvey, which I got from Thomas Jefferson and he got from Montesquieu, is that you cannot maintain a republic and empire simultaneously. The Romans couldn't do it. The Brits could only manage it up to a certain point, but then ended up going broke. The Venetians were an empire, and the United States. And in each case the republics were lost. Starting with our war against Mexico in 1846, which was to acquire California, we've been in a serious, naked grab, grab, grab imperial mood.
• Galloway accused of lying to US Senate
  Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday October 25, 2005 The Guardian
  The MP George Galloway angrily rejected fresh allegations last night from a US senate investigation that he lied under oath about Saddam Hussein's multimillion-pound oil-for-food programme. The inquiry, headed by the Republican Norm Coleman, claimed he had "knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath" when he appeared before a committee hearing in Washington in May. The MP for Bethnal Green and Bow won widespread acclaim, especially from anti-Iraq war campaigners, when he flew to the US capital to confront Mr Coleman. An assistant to Mr Galloway, Ron McKay, who sat beside him at the Senate hearing, said last night that the MP was prepared to fly to Washington again to face the new allegations. "If such an allegation has been made, George denies it absolutely and is ready to fly to the US tomorrow if Coleman brings these charges and it will all be sorted in court," he said.
• Unseen Enemy Is at Its Fiercest in a Sunni City
  By SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: October 23, 2005 RAMADI, Iraq, Oct. 22 - The Bradley fighting vehicles moved slowly down this city's main boulevard. Suddenly, a homemade bomb exploded, punching into one vehicle. Then another explosion hit, briefly lifting a second vehicle up onto its side before it dropped back down again.
  Two American soldiers climbed out of a hatch, the first with his pant leg on fire, and the other completely in flames. The first rolled over to help the other man, but when they touched, the first man also burst into flames. Insurgent gunfire began to pop. Several blocks away, Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Rosener, 20, from Minneapolis, watched the two men die from a lookout post at a Marine encampment. His heart reached out to them, but he could not. In Ramadi, Iraq's most violent city, two blocks may as well be 10 miles. "I couldn't do anything," he said of the incident, which he saw on Oct. 10. He spoke quietly, sitting in the post and looking straight ahead. "It's bad down there. You hear all the rumors. We didn't know it was going to be like this." Here in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Sunni Arab insurgents are waging their fiercest war against American troops, attacking with relative impunity just blocks from Marine- controlled territory. Every day, the Americans fight to hold their turf in a war against an enemy who seems to be everywhere but is not often seen.
• Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale
  By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL Published: October 23, 2005 WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 - The legal and political stakes are of the highest order, but the investigation into the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity is also just one skirmish in the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq.
  That fight has preoccupied the White House for more than three years, repeatedly threatening President Bush's credibility and political standing, and has again put the spotlight on Vice President Dick Cheney, who assumed a critical role in assembling and analyzing the evidence about Iraq's weapons programs.
  The intensity could be further inflamed by comments from Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser during the administration of Mr. Bush's father, in the coming edition of The New Yorker that are a reminder of how the breach over Iraq had its roots in competing views of foreign policy that extend well back into the last century.
  Mr. Scowcroft, a self-described realist who prides himself on seeing what could go wrong in any course of action, argues against what he characterizes as the utopian view of neoconservatives within the administration that toppling Saddam Hussein would open the door to democracy throughout the Middle East. He also suggests that Mr. Cheney is a man much changed, and not for the better, from the policy maker he worked with closely during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Mr. Scowcroft has long expressed reservations about the current White House's foreign policy approach and about the Iraq war in particular, but his comments could further exacerbate divisions among Republicans, especially to the degree that they are seen as reflecting the views of his close friend, the first President Bush.
  "The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney," Mr. Scowcroft told Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker. "I consider Cheney a good friend - I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." [Partisan] [Cheney][Dissension]
• U.S. Confirms Killing Of Contractors in Iraq
  Four Were Slain by Angry Mob Last Month
  By John Ward Anderson and Steve Fainaru Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page A16
  BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 -- Four U.S. contractors were killed last month when their convoy took a wrong turn, drove into a town north of Baghdad and was attacked by an angry mob, a senior U.S. military official said Saturday. The incident, which occurred Sept. 20 in the town of Duluiyah, about 45 miles north of Baghdad, was first reported Saturday by Britain's Daily Telegraph. The senior U.S. military commander confirmed the account to The Washington Post. There was no explanation for why the military did not report the deaths earlier.
  The commander said the four men -- identified by the Telegraph as employees of the Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root -- realized their convoy had taken a wrong turn and were desperately trying to escape from the town when their vehicle was attacked by insurgents. [Media]
• 'Gunmen surrounded us, firing into the windscreen. The dreaded moment had arrived: kidnap'
  Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Baghdad correspondent was abducted for 36 hours before being freed on Thursday. This is his story Saturday October 22, 2005 The Guardian
  We finished the interviews, deep in the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, and the Guardian's two vehicles started heading back to the hotel. The street was deserted until three cars, including a police Land Cruiser, sliced around a corner and into our path. Gunmen piled out and surrounded us.
  Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister, waited with a smile at his palm-fringed compound. Elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's movement had snatched me, ostensibly to gain leverage for friends detained by the British in Basra, he said, though some wanted to sell me to jihadists. He said his lobbying had clinched the release. "We got you out just in time." It was over. I slumped into a seat. An aide fished a can of beer from his jacket pocket. "I think you'll be wanting this."
• AU to Offer As Much as $4 Million To Ladner
  Refusal Could Put Package in Jeopardy By Valerie Strauss and Susan Kinzie Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, October 22, 2005; Page A01
  American University trustees have agreed to offer ousted president Benjamin Ladner a choice: Accept a departure package of between $3 million and $4 million by the beginning of next week or be fired "for cause" and risk losing some or all of it, sources said. That figure, which is higher than negotiators had discussed originally, includes salary, deferred compensation owed to Ladner and moving costs, according to sources knowledgeable about actions taken at a board meeting Thursday.
  The trustee who led the audit committee, and who looked through thousands of pages documenting Benjamin and Nancy Ladner's spending, resigned from the board effective yesterday. In a letter to the acting chairman, given to The Washington Post by someone else, Leonard R. Jaskol said his conscience would not allow him to vote for any money to be paid to Ladner, even though he said he understands "the practicality of settling these matters rather than litigating them." Jaskol's departure shifts the balance of power even further on a board that has been deeply split over Ladner. In the past two weeks, three other trustees have quit, including some of Ladner's sharpest critics. In the days and weeks ahead, the board will try to reach an agreement with Ladner, address its own structure and begin searching for a new president. The board dismissed Ladner last week after a months-long investigation of his and his wife's spending. Trustees launched an audit in the spring of Benjamin and Nancy Ladner's personal and travel expenses after receiving an anonymous letter. On Oct. 10, the board concluded that he should reimburse the university $125,000 and add $398,000 to his taxable income for the three years investigated. What was left unresolved were the terms of his departure -- whether he was terminated "for cause" and whether he would get a severance package, a faculty position or nothing. Ladner has asked for more, sources said. [Corruption]
• Taliban Step Up Afghan Bombings and Suicide Attacks
  By CARLOTTA GALL and ERIC SCHMITT Published: October 21, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 20 - Violence in southern Afghanistan has escalated in the last month as militants are increasingly taking a page from the insurgent playbook in Iraq and using more roadside bombs and suicide attacks, senior Afghan and American officials said Thursday. American officials said they were bracing for protests throughout the Islamic world in response to allegations that American soldiers in Afghanistan had burned and desecrated the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and used the remains as propaganda. American officials voiced fears of violence after Friday Prayer services.
• Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run by 'Cabal'
  By BRIAN KNOWLTON Published: October 21, 2005
  WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal," and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises. The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Mr. Powell at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005. Speaking to the New America Foundation, an independent public-policy institute in Washington, Mr. Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, skewing its policies and undercutting its ability to handle crises. "I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back," he said. "We haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time." Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence." Mr. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College [Incompetence]
• 'I am the president of Iraq. I do not recognise this court'
  Arguments and scuffling as defiant Saddam appears on mass murder charge Jonathan Steele Thursday October 20, 2005 The Guardian
  Combative and truculent, Iraq's former dictator, Saddam Hussein, argued with the judge and scuffled with security guards yesterday, when he went on trial for mass murder in a Baghdad courtroom that was as much a theatre as a forum for justice. Beamed across the Middle East on television, the trial marked the first criminal proceedings against an Arab leader in modern times. Echoing the defiance he showed when first charged last year, Saddam refused to give his name when asked to confirm his identity. "I am the president of Iraq," he said. "You know me," he told Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd. When the session opened, he stood and asked Amin: "Who are you? I want to know who you are." Denouncing the American invasion and making it clear he was appealing to a world audience, he said: "I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq." Brushing off the judge's attempts to interrupt him, he declared: "Neither do I recognise the body that has designated and authorised you, nor the aggression, because all that has been built on a false basis." Later he objected to being referred to as "former" president. Five black-robed judges sat in the specially- built courtroom in the marble building that once served as the National Command Headquarters of the Ba'ath party in what is now the fortified Green Zone. Only the presiding judge's face was seen on TV. His name had come out in the media earlier. The broadcast was subject to a deliberate 30- minute delay to allow for control over what went out and give the authorities the chance to censor Saddam's comments.
  Insurgents killed 19 people yesterday, including three election commission officials who were shot near Abu Ghraib. In addition, the military said two soldiers were killed - one American, the other British - in attacks on Tuesday night.
• Rice, in Testy Hearing, Cites Progress in Iraq
  By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: October 20, 2005 WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, facing tough questions about Iraq from Republican and Democratic senators, asserted that progress was being made in securing the country but declined to predict when American forces could withdraw or to rule out widening the war to Syria. In three and a half hours of hearings at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ms. Rice was both conciliatory and combative, rebutting the gloomy assessments from senators of both parties but at the end offering a weary concession to Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. "I understand that, yes, it might not work," Ms. Rice told Mr. Obama, referring to American plans to raise the effectiveness of Iraqi forces and heal Iraq's fractious society. "But every day we have to get up and work at our hardest to make it work."
  It was a day that echoed the anguish, anger and skepticism that opinion polls show have begun to dominate the thinking of Americans. The
  Ms. Rice was also peppered with questions about possible expansion of the fighting to Syria and Iran, especially after she said both countries had to decide whether they were on the side of war or peace in Iraq. Asked about news reports that fighting on the border could spread to Syria, Ms. Rice repeatedly indicated that no options were being ruled out. When Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, asked whether President Bush would seek Congressional approval for a military action against Syria, she declined to say anything to "circumscribe" his powers as commander in chief.
  Ms. Rice offered a cutting comment about Saudi Arabia, which administration officials say has not come forward with aid or debt relief commensurate to its wealth. Asked by Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, about the recent comments of the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, that Iraq was disintegrating, she said: "I really think that the proper role for Saudi Arabia or for any other country in the region is to help them, not critique them. And I've made that point very clear to countries in the region." Administration officials say Ms. Rice was incensed by Prince Saud's comment last month.
• An American journey
  Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed New Orleans, but also laid bare the ugly truth about America's racial divide. Former MP Oona King set out on a personal journey through the southern states to see what has changed since her black father was forced to flee the US
  Tuesday October 18, 2005 The Guardian The last time I visited New Orleans I was a student travelling around America. It was the first time in my life that I was physically thrown out of somewhere for being black. "We don't have niggers like you here!" yelled the manager of a scummy youth hostel before throwing my belongings out of a first-floor window, scattering them over the street. I vividly remember sitting on that New Orleans pavement, eaten up with rage, wondering where I would sleep that night, and how long it would take to become mad or violent if you faced ingrained racism everyday. Hurricane Katrina showed us what happened to African-Americans in New Orleans who faced ingrained racism every day: they found themselves with the poorest- quality housing on the lowest, most treacherous land, and when catastrophe struck, they were left to rot.
• Iraqis Say Civilians Killed in U.S. Raids
  Military Asserts Fatalities in West Were Insurgents
  By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, October 18, 2005; Page A01
  BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks. In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.
• De Oppresso Liber
  By Senator Mitch McConnell
  March 29, 2003
  Their motto, "de Oppresso Liber", accurately describes the goal of America's efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq, operations in which 5th Group soldiers have played leading roles. Translated from the Latin, their motto instructs these brave and honorable Americans "to liberate the oppressed." 5th Group's motto is a poignant reminder that America fights wars not for territorial expansion, aggression, or empire, but for freedom, security, and democracy.
  In Afghanistan, for example, 5th Group soldiers conducted staggeringly effective military operations deep behind enemy lines...on horseback. These same soldiers are now clearing airfields, hunting for weapons of mass destruction, and undermining the regime of Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein has built an empire on top of the graves of the countless victims of his brutal reign. For decades, he has squandered his people's wealth in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that he has used against his own people. He has launched numerous wars of aggression against his neighbors, and is a sponsor of global terrorist organizations. The United States is leading a coalition to eliminate his brutal regime for the benefit of both the American and Iraqi people, and indeed the entire world.
  I am grateful for President Bush's steady leadership and I have no doubt that our military men and women are the finest in the world and will defend our nation with skill, precision, courage, and honor. This war will require patience and perseverance, but America will not shirk from its responsibilities. Hundreds of thousands of American and coalition soldiers are risking their lives so that America may be safe, and so that others may be free. Tens of thousands of Kentuckians are among these noble forces, and our prayers are with them. May God bless America. And may He bless our soldiers in harm's way who seek to uphold the motto of the 5th Special Forces Group: De Oppresso Liber. [Imperialism] [In denial]
• Move Over, Adam Smith: The Visible Hand of Uncle Sam
  By John Embry and Andrew Hepburn {Japan Focus 17 October 2005}
  [John Embry and Andrew Hepburn provide a valuable entry into the world of finance. The two analysts illuminate the shadowy trail of the "Plunge Protection Team" in its apparent mission to rig the American stock markets. Their account is backed up by considerable indirect evidence as well as statements by credible insiders. If their account is correct, it means that US markets look a lot like the Japanese markets that were long derided for being a site of repeated official manipulation. A more important conclusion may be that US markets are even shakier than many believe.
• Foreign Ministers Urge End to Cuba Embargo
  By CIARAN GILES The Associated Press Thursday, October 13, 2005; 4:57 PM SALAMANCA, Spain -- Foreign ministers from Latin America, Spain and Portugal backed Cuba on Thursday in two of its battles against the United States, calling for an end to the U.S. embargo and the expulsion from the U.S. of a Cuban militant wanted for a 1976 plane bombing. The foreign ministers, meeting in the Spanish city of Salamanca a day before 20 heads of state gather for the 15th Iberoamerican Summit, urged the United States "to put an end to the financial, commercial and economic blockade which it maintains against Cuba."
  "We reaffirm once more ... that unilateral coercive measures which affect the welfare of people and obstruct integration processes are unacceptable," the ministers said.
  The U.S. sanctions, which aim to squeeze the island's economy and push out Cuban President Fidel Castro, are now in their fifth decade. President Bush has sought more stringent enforcement of provisions forbidding most travel to the island. Cuba claims the embargo has cost it $82 billion.
  The foreign ministers also backed Venezuela's efforts have a Cuban militant extradited from the United States to face trial for allegedly masterminding the Oct. 6, 1976 bombing of a Cuban jet that killed 73 people. Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban native who became a naturalized Venezuelan, is in a U.S. detention center in El Paso, Texas after allegedly crossing into the United States illegally from Mexico in March. Cuba and others have been clamoring for him to be sent to Venezuela to stand trial for allegedly plotting the bombing from the South American country, but an immigration judge declared last week he could not be deported there, citing the possibility he would face torture _ a claim denied by Venezuela [Sanctions] [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Media] [Spin]
• How a Lobbyist Stacked the Deck
  Abramoff Used DeLay Aide, Attacks On Allies to Defeat Anti-Gambling Bill
  By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, October 16, 2005; Page A01
  Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his team were beginning to panic. An anti-gambling bill had cleared the Senate and appeared on its way to passage by an overwhelming margin in the House of Representatives. If that happened, Abramoff's client, a company that wanted to sell state lottery tickets online, would be out of business.
  But on July 17, 2000, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act went down to defeat, to the astonishment of supporters who included many anti-gambling groups and Christian conservatives. A senior aide to then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) helped scuttle the bill in the House. The aide, Tony C. Rudy, 39, e-mailed Abramoff internal congressional communications and advice, according to documents and the lobbyist's former associates. Rudy received favors from Abramoff. He went on two luxury trips with the lobbyist that summer, including one partly paid for by Abramoff's client, eLottery Inc. Abramoff also arranged for eLottery to pay $25,000 to a Jewish foundation that hired Rudy's wife as a consultant, according to documents and interviews. Months later, Rudy himself was hired as a lobbyist by Abramoff. The vote that day in July was just one part of an extraordinary yearlong effort by Abramoff on behalf of eLottery, a small gambling services company based in Connecticut [Corruption]
• 'They said you've a call from the Nobel committee. I said, why?'
  Harold Pinter in his own words Friday October 14, 2005 The Guardian
  "I heard the news of the prize at 20 to 12 this morning, only 20 minutes before the official announcement. It had never occurred to me that I was a contender. They called me and said you're going to receive a call from the chairman of the Nobel committee and I think I said 'why?'. The chairman said 'You've won the Nobel Prize for Literature.' I was speechless and remained so for another couple of minutes. But I was very moved by this even though I hadn't really taken it in. Why they've given me this prize I don't know.
  "I hadn't seen the citation then. But I suspected that they must have taken my political activities into consideration since my political engagement is very much part of my work. It's interwoven into many of my plays. But I will find out more when I go to Stockholm in December.
• 'Al-Qaeda Letter' Belies Bush's Iraq Claims
  By Robert Parry October 14, 2005 A letter that U.S. intelligence attributes to al-Qaeda's second-in-command undercuts George W. Bush's latest claims that the terrorist organization has plans for conquests reaching halfway around the world and targeting America's freedom. The 6,000-word letter purportedly written by Osama bin-Laden's deputy Ayman Zawahiri on July 9 lists al-Qaeda's goals as far more limited - driving U.S. forces from Iraq, establishing a state or "emirate" in the country's Sunni enclaves, resisting outside assaults, and only later trying to expand into a religious "caliphate" incorporating surrounding territory. The proposed "caliphate" could stretch to the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, said the letter purportedly sent by Zawahiri to al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi. By contrast, Bush said in an Oct. 6 speech that Muslim extremists intended to use Iraq as a base to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia," while simultaneously engineering the strategic defeat of the United States. [Spin]
• October 13, 2005 The Two-Headed Monster
  Imperial Hacks: Right and Left By WERTHER
  "Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." Huey Long Regular readers of these musings might suspect that we have been rather hard on our anointed Zeus and the pantheon of lesser gods he commands, namely, the President and the Republican Party. In truth, criticizing the GOP is like dynamite fishing: hardly sporting, but appealing nevertheless when one is in a certain mood.
  Certainly, the Party of Lincoln provides rich material for humor of a rather sarcastic kind: a war on Iraq that may be the greatest strategic disaster in our history; doubling the national debt in fewer than five years; the tomfoolery of Freedom Fries [1]; a tragic-comic ineptitude at protecting U.S. citizens from the mere vicissitudes of weather while simultaneously claiming the divine power to coerce all mankind into an earthly utopia; the nomination to the Supreme Court of Miss Harriet Miers.
  Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton's United Nations ambassador and perpetual scold about the imperative for "muscular internationalism" presumably with himself and his friends doing the muscle-flexing. [Incompetence] [In denial]
• Rice Reaches Pact on Keeping Central Asia Base
  By JOEL BRINKLEY Published: October 12, 2005 BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Oct. 11 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting with the new leaders of Kyrgyzstan, reached agreement on Tuesday on long-term rights to maintaining an air base here for servicing military aircraft on missions to Afghanistan. The United States and allied forces may continue to use the base, adjacent to the international airport here, "until the situation in Afghanistan is completely stabilized," President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev said at a news conference. Last July, Kyrgyzstan, along with three other Central Asian states and Russia and China, issued a statement calling on the United States to evacuate all its bases in this region. A short time later, the Kyrgyz defense minister told Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld that the United States could continue to use the base. But since then, Kyrgyzstan has formed a new government, and a senior State Department official said the government had waffled on a commitment before the agreement reached Tuesday. The agreement is particularly important because neighboring Uzbekistan has asked the United States to leave its air base there, and the Defense Department says it will have withdrawn from that base by year's end. That leaves only the Kyrgyz base near Afghanistan.
• The Strategic Class
  by ARI BERMAN [from the August 29, 2005 issue of The Nation]
  In July 2002, at the first Senate hearing on Iraq, then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Joe Biden pledged his allegiance to Bush's war. Ever since, the blunt-spoken Biden has seized every opportunity to dismiss antiwar critics within his own party, vocally denouncing Bush's handling of the war while doggedly supporting the war effort itself. Biden carried this message into the Kerry campaign as the candidate's closest foreign policy confidant, and a few days after announcing his own intention to run for the presidency in 2008, he gave a major speech at the Brookings Institution in which he criticized rising calls for withdrawal as a "gigantic mistake." The Democrats' speculative front-runner for '08, Hillary Clinton, has offered similarly hawkish rhetoric. "If we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can't afford to do that," Clinton told CBS in February. Instead, she recently proposed enlarging the Army by 80,000 troops "to respond to threats wherever danger lies." Clinton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, appears more comfortable accommodating the President's Iraq policy than opposing it, and her early and sustained support for the war (and frequent photo-ops with the troops) supposedly reinforces her national security credentials. The prominence of party leaders like Biden and Clinton, and of a slew of other potential prowar candidates who support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, presents the Democrats with an odd dilemma: At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of US troops, and British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. [Thinktanks]
• Bevanite attitude to US condemned
  From the archive Wednesday October 10, 1951 The Guardian
  Speaking in his constituency at Woodford last night, Mr Churchill said it was vital to world peace, and especially to our own safety, that our relations with the United States should be continually growing stronger and that our influence with the American government, which wielded such enormous power in the world today, should be restored and improved.
• George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'
  President told Palestinians God also talked to him about Middle East peace
  Ewen MacAskill Friday October 7, 2005 The Guardian
  
  George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.
  One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." [Bizarre] [includes incredible photo]
• UK accuses Iran over killings of soldiers
  Ewen MacAskill and Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday October 6, 2005 The Guardian
  Britain and Iran clashed openly last night after a senior British official directly accused Tehran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed eight British soldiers and two security guards since May. The bombs, triggered when an infra-red beam is touched, have created havoc among British forces in southern Iraq. They release a projectile capable of penetrating armoured vehicles, against which the British army has virtually no defence. The British official said that Iranian interference in Iraq could be related to British pressure on Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions. "It would be entirely natural that they would want to send a message 'Don't mess with us'," he said. An Iranian government spokesman rejected the British accusations and said it was opposed to the insurgency in Iraq.
• Breaking America's grip on the net
  After troubled negotiations in Geneva, the US may be forced to relinquish control of the internet to a coalition of governments
  Kieren McCarthy Thursday October 6, 2005 The Guardian
  You would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the internet to be a grand affair - a big stage, spotlights, media scrums and a charismatic frontman working the crowd. But unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon's slightly apprehensive voice through a beige plastic earbox. The words were calm, measured and unexciting, but their implications will be felt for generations to come. Hendon is the Department for Trade and Industry's director of business relations and was in Geneva representing the UK government and European Union at the third and final preparatory meeting for next month's World Summit on the Information Society. He had just announced a political coup over the running of the internet. Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium.
• U.S. Envoy Goes to Nicaragua to Back Embattled Leader
  By JOEL BRINKLEY Published: October 5, 2005
  MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Oct. 4 - The deputy secretary of state, Robert B. Zoellick, arrived here on Tuesday for two days of talks intended to rally support for President Enrique Bolaños against what the secretary called a "creeping coup" by the "corrupt and dangerous leaders of the past." Skip to next paragraph
  Mr. Bolaños, who won the last election for president in 2001, has been embroiled in a battle with Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader and former president who has lost three elections for president, and Arnoldo Alemán, who was president from 1997 to 2002 before receiving a 20-year sentence for embezzling $100 million from the state treasury. The Ortega-Alemán alliance, known here as "el pacto," has managed to draw away Mr. Bolaños's support in the legislature, so that he now commands the allegiance of only 8 of the 92 National Assembly members.
• Talking Points Aside, Bush Stance on Palestinian State Is Not a First
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Page A18
  As Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes traveled through the Middle East last week seeking to burnish the U.S. image, one of her key talking points was that President Bush is the first president to call for a Palestinian state. "The person I work for, President Bush, is the first president in the history of America to say we believe the Palestinians should have a state, living side by side in peace with Israel," Hughes told al-Jazeera satellite television. She repeated the statement two more times in the five-minute interview.
  Hughes, a former White House official, told reporters traveling with her that she remembered intense administration debates at the time "about what a significant step this would be for United States policy" if he supported a Palestinian state. But, oddly, when Bush announced in 2001 that he supported a Palestinian state, administration officials rushed to say that he was simply following a policy articulated by his predecessor, Bill Clinton. In fact, news reports at the time said Bush was merely the first Republican president to support an independent state for the Palestinians. [Spin]
• Bangkok Struggles to End Separatist Violence in Southern Thailand
  Adam Wolfe 30 September 2005 While the world looks to suture the recent Aceh peace agreement onto the violence that is bleeding southern Thailand, the region's Muslim insurgency is eyeing the benefits of globalized terror networks. Bangkok has tried a variety of responses to the separatist violence -- everything from imposing martial law to dropping 100 million origami birds inscribed with peace messages onto the region -- but nothing has curtailed the violence, which has killed some 900 people since January 2004. With every attempted tactic, Bangkok seems to reinforce the differences between the Muslim, Malay-speaking south and the Buddhist, Thai-speaking majority. [Human rights]
• Condoleezza the Gun Slinger
  The Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History
  By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS October 3, 2005
  Capitol Hill Blue, the Washington DC publication that cultivates relationships with White House staffers, reports (September 28) one White House aide saying: "It's like working in an insane asylum. People walk around like they're in a trance. We're the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it." "If POTUS is on the road, you can breathe a little easier," says an aide. Otherwise it is one temper tantrum after another from Bush, whose "cakewalk war" has turned into interminable conflict, whose idiocy in diverting funding for New Orleans' levees to war in Iraq was disastrous for the famous city, and whose Social Security privatization has been rejected by the electorate. Even rah-rah Republican Newt Gingrich says the White House is surrounded by failure.
• Exit Strategy
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 170. Oct. 1, 2005
  The debate has shifted in the United States. It is no longer about the merits of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is now about when and how the U.S. can withdraw its troops from Iraq, what is called "exit strategy." George Bush does continue to make speeches before ultra-friendly audiences saying that withdrawal now would embolden terrorists. But I think one should notice the "now" in his rhetoric. In any case, Bush's rhetoric is not going over very well. Even among his most ardent supporters, many are saying that the rhetoric is vacuous, and there is no concrete evidence offered of military or political progress for the U.S. position in Iraq. Indeed, every day the situation seems worse, with even the U.S.-backed Iraqi government's officials in Shi'ite Basra arresting British soldiers, who have to be rescued by force. One has to pay attention when the quintessential Establishment voice on foreign policy in the United States, the review Foreign Affairs, runs an article in which the author is arguing that "the Bush doctrine has collapsed" and that consequently the government has no choice but to "embrace realism" and take a "pragmatic turn."
• DeLay Is Indicted on Two New Charges
  Money Laundering Alleged in Texas By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page A01
  A Texas grand jury indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) yesterday for alleged involvement in money laundering related to the 2002 Texas election, raising new and more serious allegations than the conspiracy charge lodged against the former House majority leader last week. [Corruption]
• Weak Responses Led To 9/11, Cheney Asserts
  Inadequate Retaliation Seen in 7 Cases By Sam Coates Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page A18
  CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C., Oct. 3 -- The Bush administration will aggressively pursue terrorism in Iraq and on "every other front," Vice President Cheney said Monday, asserting that the United States is now paying the price for two decades of weak responses to terrorist attacks. Addressing Marines who have just returned from Iraq, Cheney said the failure of both Republican and Democratic administrations to retaliate decisively after terrorism incidents during the 1980s and 1990s led directly to the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001.
  He told the troops that while progress in Iraq had been "superb," an early withdrawal would turn it into a staging area for greater attacks against the United States and its allies. He also said that the U.S. mission would not end with Iraq. "In the broader Middle East and beyond, America will continue to encourage free markets, democracy and tolerance," Cheney said. He said that eventually, "a terrible threat will be removed from the lives of our children and our grandchildren." [Bizarre]
• Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers
  By ADAM LIPTAK Published: October 3, 2005 OCALA, Fla. - About 9,700 American prisoners are serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they could vote, serve on a jury or gamble in a casino - in short, before they turned 18. More than a fifth have no chance for parole.
  Juvenile criminals are serving life terms in at least 48 states, according to a survey by The New York Times, and their numbers have increased sharply over the past decade. Ms. Falcon's jury found her guilty of murder, though it never did sort out precisely what happened that night, its foreman said. It was enough that she was there. "It broke my heart," said Steven Sharp, the foreman. "As tough as it is, based on the crime, I think it's appropriate. It's terrible to put a 15-year-old behind bars forever."
  The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does that. Life without parole, the most severe form of life sentence, is theoretically available for juvenile criminals in about a dozen countries. But a report to be issued on Oct. 12 by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found juveniles serving such sentences in only three others. Israel has seven, South Africa has four and Tanzania has one.
  By contrast, the report counted some 2,200 people in the United States serving life without parole for crimes they committed before turning 18. [human rights] [Double standards]
• Monitors Find Significant Fraud in Afghan Elections
  By CARLOTTA GALL Published: October 3, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 2 - Election officials and observers said Sunday that with 80 percent of the ballots counted in Afghanistan's national and provincial elections, they had found significant incidents of fraud.
• When a reporter got too close to the story
  Al-Jazeera journalist Taysir Alouni was jailed by a Spanish court last week after being found guilty of collaborating with al-Qaida. Is he a terrorist sympathiser or just very good at his job?
  Giles Tremlett in Madrid Monday October 3, 2005 The Guardian
  It was a scoop of truly global proportions. Just a few weeks after al-Qaida redefined the world news agenda for a generation of journalists by attacking New York and Washington on September 11 2001, television reporter Taysir Alouni interviewed the planet's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. "The battle has moved to inside America. We will continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God," Bin Laden warned him during an hour-long, recorded chat inside a tent. Last week, however, it was looking like a scoop too far. Former al-Jazeera television correspondent Alouni was sent to jail for seven years by a Spanish court that deemed he had not just cultivated al-Qaida contacts as he pursued Bin Laden, but had actively collaborated with them. [Human rights] [Double standards] [media]

• Blair in secret Saudi mission
  Expulsions link to £40bn arms deal David Leigh and Ewen MacAskill Tuesday September 27, 2005 The Guardian
  Tony Blair and John Reid, the defence secretary, have been holding secret talks with Saudi Arabia in pursuit of a huge arms deal worth up to £40bn, according to diplomatic sources. Mr Blair went to Riyadh on July 2, en route to Singapore, where Britain was bidding for the 2012 Olympics. Three weeks later, Mr Reid made a two-day visit, when he sought to persuade Prince Sultan, the crown prince, to re-equip his air force with the Typhoon, the European fighter plane of which the British arms company BAE has the lion's share of manufacturing. Article continues
  Defence, diplomatic and legal sources say negotiations are stalling because the Saudis are demanding three favours. These are that Britain should expel two anti-Saudi dissidents, Saad al- Faqih and Mohammed al-Masari; that British Airways should resume flights to Riyadh, currently cancelled through terrorism fears; and that a corruption investigation implicating the Saudi ruling family and BAE should be dropped. Crown prince Sultan's son-in-law, Prince Turki bin Nasr, is at the centre of a "slush fund" investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. The Saudis have been trying for years to get their hands on Mr Faqih, who they say was involved in a plot to assassinate the recently enthroned King Abdullah. Mr Faqih, who has asylum, denies support for violence, and privately neither the Foreign Office nor the security services regard him as a danger to Britain. Mr Masari fled Saudi Arabia in 1994, and the Major government made an unsuccessful attempt to exile him to the Caribbean island of Dominica under pressure from BAE.
• Bush plea for cash to rebuild Iraq raises $600
  Mark Townsend in Houston Sunday September 25, 2005 The Observer
  An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt. Yet since the appeal was launched earlier this month, donations to rebuild New Orleans have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars. The public's reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration's attempt to offer citizens 'a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq' has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country. This coincides with concern over the increasing cost of the war. More than $30 billion has been appropriated for the reconstruction. Initially, America's overseas aid agency, USaid, expected it to cost taxpayers no more than $1.7bn, but it is now asking the public if they want to contribute even more. It is understood to be the first time that a US government has made an appeal to taxpayers for foreign aid money.
• Robert Kaplan: Empire Without Apologies
  ANDREW J. BACEVICH posted September 8, 2005 (September 26, 2005 issue)
  To a degree that other mere scribblers can only envy, Robert Kaplan is a writer whose views command attention among movers and shakers. For Clinton-era officials grappling with the crisis of a disintegrating Yugoslavia, Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts, published in 1993, served for a time as holy writ. The essays collected in The Coming Anarchy, released in 2001, offered a bleak but influential depiction of the disorder roiling the planet after the cold war. Restlessly trolling the world for stories, Kaplan has become much more than a reporter; he is a public intellectual who happens to live out of his rucksack. With his new book, Kaplan turns from describing the world's ills to proposing a remedy. The antidote to anarchy is empire, policed by American soldiers holding an assault rifle in one hand and offering candy bars with the other.
  According to Kaplan, the world's sole superpower doesn't especially need tanks and fighter-bombers, artifacts from a military age now past. Instead, it ought to be investing in something akin to a "Peace Corps with guns." During the course of his travels, he discovers that the nation already has this capability in its Special Forces and Marine Corps--elite organizations optimized for imperial policing. All that's required is to turn them loose and to get out of the way. After all, as Kaplan explains in an assertion sure to come as news to the Air Force and the Northern Alliance, a mere handful of special operations troops "conquered Afghanistan by themselves."
  Kaplan introduces Imperial Grunts with this typically bold assertion: "By the turn of the twenty-first century, the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment's notice." Whether such an assessment of US military power was ever accurate is doubtful. By 2005, however, it had become demonstrably false. Hard-pressed to hold on to the new provinces to which today's architects of empire have laid claim, America's armed forces are in no position to appropriate more. As for the Pentagon's ability to flood additional obscure quarters of the earth, the troops required to do so simply do not exist. The real story of the present-day US military, which the peripatetic Kaplan somehow has managed to overlook, is one of power squandered--lives lost, dollars wasted, a glittering reputation sullied. It's enough to suggest that a militarized empire might not be such a great idea after all. [Imperialism]
• Antiwar Fervor Fills the Streets
  Demonstration Is Largest in Capital Since U.S. Military Invaded Iraq
  By Petula Dvorak Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 25, 2005; Page A01
  Tens of thousands of people packed downtown Washington yesterday and marched past the White House in the largest show of antiwar sentiment in the nation's capital since the conflict in Iraq began. The demonstration drew grandmothers in wheelchairs and babies in strollers, military veterans in fatigues and protest veterans in tie-dye. It was the first time in a decade that protest groups had a permit to march in front of the executive mansion, and, even though President Bush was not there, the setting seemed to electrify the crowd.
  Signs, T-shirts, slogans and speeches outlined the cost of the Iraq conflict in human as well as economic terms. They memorialized dead U.S. troops and Iraqis, and contrasted the price of war with the price of recovery for areas battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Riffs on Vietnam-era protests were plentiful, with messages declaring, "Make Levees, Not War," "I never thought I'd miss Nixon" and "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam." Many in the crowd had protested in the 1960s; others weren't even born during those tumultuous years. Protest organizers estimated that 300,000 people participated, triple their original target. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who walked the march route, said the protesters achieved the goal of 100,000 and probably exceeded it. Asked whether at least 150,000 showed up, the chief said, "That's as good a guess as any.
• Tobacco firms' subtle tactics lure smokers to their brand
  Philip Morris and other cigarette giants take to subliminal style messages after cigarette advertising is banned Jamie Doward and Lea Teuscher Sunday September 25, 2005 The Observer
  Picture the scene: You walk into a chic bar where the clientele is young and the drinks reassuringly expensive; you note the stylish combinations of red and white furniture, the impressive attention to detail that goes into everything from the cushions to the ashtrays. Suddenly, inexplicably, you urgently want to smoke a Marlboro cigarette. It sounds the stuff of bad science fiction, but Philip Morris, the manufacturer of Marlboro, is such a believer in 'experiential' marketing - where furniture and design are used to subtly convey a brand's strengths - it has created a crack team to transform the insides of Britain's upmarket bars and music events, in an attempt to boost its profits. As a smoking ban in England nears and tobacco advertising has been banned, cigarette companies have had to find other ways to sell their products.
• Blair attacks BBC for 'anti-US bias'
  James Robinson, David Smith and Ned Temko Sunday September 18, 2005 The Observer
  Tony Blair has denounced the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina as 'full of hatred of America' and 'gloating' at the country's plight, it was reported yesterday. Blair allegedly made the remarks privately to Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which owns the rival Sky News. The comments threatened a new rift between the government and the BBC following the Andrew Gilligan affair over events leading to the Iraq war and recent criticisms of ministers Today presenter John Humphrys, which were controversially leaked to the press.
  Downing Street said last night it had no comment on the report in the Financial Times. The BBC said that its coverage had been 'committed solely to relaying the events fully, accurately and impartially'. Murdoch, a long-standing critic of the BBC, was addressing the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York. Chuckling, he said: 'I probably shouldn't be telling you this' before recounting a recent conversation with Blair. He said the Prime Minister was in New Delhi when he criticised BBC coverage of the catastrophe in New Orleans: 'He said it was just full of hatred of America and gloating at our troubles.' [media]
• Galloway and Hitchens rouse New York crowd
  Paul Owen Thursday September 15, 2005
  George Galloway, the British MP and anti-war campaigner, was labelled a "disgrace" last night by pro-war journalist Christopher Hitchens, who was himself branded by Mr Galloway as a "slug" leaving a "trail of slime". The two rhetorical heavyweights clashed in a rousing debate on Iraq in New York, both landing painful political blows among the insults, although Mr Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, came unstuck when he referred to the September 11 attacks.
  But Mr Galloway hit the wrong note with his comments on September 11. "You may think that those aeroplanes in this city on 9/11 came out of a clear, blue sky. I believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us." A crescendo of booing cut him off as he continued to speak, and Mr Hitchens commented: "Mr Galloway, you picked the wrong city to say that in, and arguably the wrong month, as well." [in denial]
• Exodus from south Texas:
  A motorist, right, is pulled over by a police car for driving the wrong way, heading north on the southbound lanes of Interstate 45 near Woodlands, Texas, Thursday as northbound lanes at left remain snarled with traffic during the evacuation caused by Hurricane Rita. Under orders from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, all lanes were used for northbound evacuation traffic only. Up to 20 evacuees were killed in a bus fire near Dallas. AP-Yonhap [Incompetence]
• State Dept. Stays Neutral On Musharraf Remarks
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 24, 2005; Page A18 The State Department declined yesterday to take a position on remarks last week by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suggesting that claiming rape in his country was seen as a route to riches, but it said world leaders should denounce violence against women. "We encourage leaders around the world to speak out about the fact that violence against women is unacceptable," said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman.
  Musharraf told The Washington Post last week that claiming rape had become "a moneymaking concern" in Pakistan. "A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped," he said. He later denied making the comments [human rights]
• Saudi Minister Warns U.S. Iraq May Face Disintegration
  By JOEL BRINKLEY Published: September 23, 2005 WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war. "There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together," he said in a meeting with reporters at the Saudi Embassy here. "All the dynamics are pulling the country apart." He said he was so concerned that he was carrying this message "to everyone who will listen" in the Bush administration.
  Prince Saud's statements, some of the most pessimistic public comments on Iraq by a Middle Eastern leader in recent months, were in stark contrast to the generally upbeat assessments that the White House and the Pentagon have been offering.
  Prince Saud, who is in Washington for meetings with administration officials, blamed several American decisions for the slide toward disintegration, though he did not refer to the Bush administration directly. Primary among them was designating "every Sunni as a Baathist criminal," he said. Saudi Arabia styles itself as the capital and protector of Sunni Islam, and the prince's remarks - at times harsh and at other moments careful - were emblematic of the conflicted Saudi-American relationship.
• Blair in denial over Iraq, says Kennedy
  Tania Branigan and Michael White Thursday September 22, 2005 The Guardian
  Charles Kennedy will today use his keynote address to the Liberal Democrat conference to accuse the prime minister of "playing politics" with opposition leaders over anti-terrorism legislation and of letting his pride get in the way of withdrawing British troops from Iraq. Recalling the extra 1m votes his anti-war stance won on May 5, the Liberal Democrats' leader will don the mantle of "real opposition leader" to accuse Tony Blair of being in denial over Iraq and over anti-terror legislation. Mr Kennedy will step up his demand for a timetable for withdrawing UK troops, saying: "The government must confront the fact that the presence of British and American forces in Iraq is a part of the problem. After this week's events in Basra we cannot sustain the myth that Iraqis see coalition troops as liberators. What they see is an occupation."
• Age cannot wither him
  On the brink of turning 80, Gore Vidal - aristocrat, intellectual and prolific novelist, playwright, and essayist - is as outspoken as ever. He talks to Emma Brockes about the corruption of the Bush administration, his ongoing radicalism and the benefits of speaking in complete sentences
  Wednesday September 21, 2005 The Guardian Age has not changed him. His writing style is "as disagreeably clear" as ever (he says he should like to use more adverbs, but can never make them work for him); his view of the world is unaltered. "My opinion was never terribly high of the world. The world has done nothing to alter itself. Stalemate."
• The Afghan Difference
  Editorial . Published: September 22, 2005
  Afghanistan and Iraq were both invaded by United States-led forces, which overthrew outlaw regimes. Both have new constitutions, guided by the same American diplomat. Both have foreign armies of significant size on their sovereign soil. But Iraq is careering toward civil war, while Afghanistan has just completed an encouragingly inclusive parliamentary election. Iraq cannot even begin to talk about defending itself without American troops. Afghanistan is already saying it's time for the United States to cease major military operations on its territory. While no one should underestimate Afghanistan's serious problems, including a resurgent Taliban, a shattered infrastructure and rampant drug trafficking, no one can fail to see the many signs of progress there, while only the most die-hard Bush administration spinners pretend to see any significant and lasting gains in Iraq. It is important to try to understand why this is happening.
• Anger Grows in Basra After British Raid
  Christoph Bangert/Polaris, for The New York Times By ROBERT F. WORTH Published: September 22, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 21 - Waving pistols and assault rifles, Iraqi police officers led an angry anti-British demonstration in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday, and the provincial council voted unanimously to stop cooperating with British forces in the area until Britain apologized for storming a police station to free two of its soldiers.
• Smash Into Iraqi Jail To Free 2 Detained Soldiers
  By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, September 20, 2005; Page A01
  BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 -- British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday in the southern city of Basra to free two British commandos detained earlier in the day by Iraqi police, witnesses and Iraqi officials said. The incident climaxed a confrontation between the two nominal allies that had sparked hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra's streets. An Iraqi official said a half-dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail, the Reuters news agency reported. The provincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."
  Monday's violence underscored the increasing volatility of Basra, a Shiite Muslim-majority city that had previously escaped much of the violence of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency. Tension has been growing between British forces in the city and Shiite police and militias that operate there.
• Message: I Care About the Black Folks
  By FRANK RICH Published: September 18, 2005 ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
  The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action. In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
• Lack of Cohesion Bedevils Recovery
  Red Tape, Lapses in Planning Stall Relief
  By Shankar Vedantam and Dean Starkman Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page A01
  Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves. Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross- purposes.
• Old Guard Lurks in Afghanistan Amid Vast Throng of Candidates
  Despite Enthusiasm, Rising Taliban Violence Could Mar Election
  By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page A21 KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 17 -- As campaigning for Afghanistan's first legislative election in more than three decades drew to a close this week, a 60-year-old woman in a chic blazer and a gauzy veil stepped up to the microphone at an outdoor rally. In the distance, Soraya Parlika could see the white walls of the stadium where officials of the Taliban movement, the repressive and fundamentalist Islamic militia that controlled Afghanistan until late 2001, used to publicly flog women charged with adultery. In front of her, men in turbans waited respectfully for Parlika to speak -- as outwardly unfazed by the fact that the candidate was a woman as they were by the knowledge that she was a communist activist before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. [Media]
• Lack of Cohesion Bedevils Recovery Red Tape, Lapses in Planning Stall Relief
  By Shankar Vedantam and Dean Starkman Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page A01
  Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves. Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross-purposes.
• Chavez Stirs Things Up at the U.N.
  Venezuelan Leader Wins Cheers With Rant Against U.S.
  By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A14
  UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken on the mantle of the bad boy of U.N. summitry, winning plaudits from Third World envoys for bashing the United States, and rattling U.N. officials by questioning the legitimacy of this week's summit of world leaders. Chavez's appearance on the world stage this week echoed his mentor Fidel Castro's historic 1960 debut address before the General Assembly, complete with a fiery condemnation of American imperialism and side trips scheduled for Saturday to a Harlem church and community groups in the Bronx.
  Chavez generated the loudest burst of applause for a world leader at the summit with his unbridled attack on what he characterized as American militarism and capitalism. He even offered a proposal to move the United Nations to Jerusalem or a city in the developing world.
  Chavez, passing the five-minute limit for speakers, grew irritated when a U.N. official slipped him a note requesting that he wrap it up. Turning toward the president of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson of Sweden, he said: "I think the president of the United States spoke for twenty minutes here yesterday. I would ask your indulgence to let me finish my statement." U.N. experts and foreign envoys said Chavez, like Castro, was able to capitalize on a reservoir of resentment of American power in the world body. "Obviously people are pleased with what he said, but they cannot express themselves as frankly as he does," said one Arab ambassador, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend the United States [Media]
• Clarke's draft bill proposes new offence of glorification
  · Defendants found guilty could face five years in jail · Liberty warns loose talk will become a criminal act Alan Travis and Rosie Cowan Friday September 16, 2005 The Guardian
  The government's proposed anti-terrorism laws published yesterday are so widely drawn that anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" any terrorist act committed over the past 20 years could face a sentence of up to five years in prison. But the small print of the draft terrorism bill published yesterday shows that the home secretary is preparing to go even further and draw up a list of historical terrorist acts which if "glorified" could mean a criminal offence being committed.
  A Home Office spokeswoman said 9/11 was such an example; it would become a "listed event", the appropriate ban lasting longer than 20 years. However, the 1916 Irish Easter Rising would be exempt. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the offence of "glorification" was so broad it meant the home secretary was now acquiring powers to determine which historical figures were terrorists and which freedom fighters.
• Powell's Widening Credibility Gap
  Robert Parry September 17, 2005
  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell appears to have widened his credibility gap with his latest attempt to shift the blame for bogus evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction onto mid-level intelligence analysts - and away from himself and other senior officials.
• The Pentagon's Bid to Militarize Space
  Giuseppe Anzera 17 August 2005
  A series of Pentagon initiatives aimed at space militarization and at the creation of new types of armament -- capable of precisely striking small targets in every corner of the world and of neutralizing most of today's anti-aircraft defenses -- will likely result in a new power battlefield in the near future. While the implementation of space weapons is likely to increase the capability gap between Washington and other powers at first, a broader vision reveals dangers involved in the move that could affect U.S. interests, for it will likely trigger off determined reactions by its competitors. Competitor states could successfully deploy a small number of low cost orbital weapons, thus forcing the U.S. to design an extremely expensive space defense system.
• Convicted of Aiding Terrorist, Translator Prepares for Prison Cell, Still in Disbelief
  By JULIA PRESTON Published: August 7, 2005 Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic-language translator, has been practicing for life in a prison cell. He closes himself into small spaces to meditate and combs through his library for nonpolitical books he supposes his keepers will allow him to read.
  But he still cannot quite believe that prison is where he is going. After working for nearly a decade as a translator for Lynne F. Stewart, a New York defense lawyer, Mr. Yousry, 49, was convicted along with her on Feb. 10 in Manhattan federal court of providing material aid to terrorism and conspiring to deceive the government. Now free on bail and awaiting sentencing, which is set for Sept. 30, he faces as much as 20 years behind bars. Although months have passed since the verdict, Mr. Yousry remains shocked and baffled by it. Throughout the grueling nine-month trial, Mr. Yousry and his lawyers were convinced that he had a strong chance of acquittal. The charges hinged on Ms. Stewart's provocative legal strategy on behalf of a convicted terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in which she defied a prison rule that restricted communications by releasing messages from him to the international press and to his militant followers in Egypt. Mr. Yousry's lawyers, David Ruhnke and David Stern, showed in court that he took no actions on his own to help the sheik politically and did his translation work based on instructions he received from Ms. Stewart and other lawyers for Mr. Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim cleric who is serving a life sentence in federal prison for conspiring to bomb landmarks in New York City. [Human rights]
• Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations
  By Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, August 7, 2005; Page A01
  In the snow-draped mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir watched "every second al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer along with a Kalashnikov" as they prepared to scatter into hiding and exile. On the screens were photographs of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Nearly four years later, al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.
  In two video reports, experts on jihadists' use of the Web describe how al Qaeda and allied groups are using the Internet to recruit more fighters, spread their message and train their followers to commit acts of terror. Samples of terrorist manuals and screenshots of jihadist Web sites are also available. * e-Qaeda Special Report Al Qaeda suicide bombers and ambush units in Iraq routinely depend on the Web for training and tactical support, relying on the Internet's anonymity and flexibility to operate with near impunity in cyberspace. In Qatar, Egypt and Europe, cells affiliated with al Qaeda that have recently carried out or seriously planned bombings have relied heavily on the Internet. Such cases have led Western intelligence agencies and outside terrorism specialists to conclude that the "global jihad movement," sometimes led by al Qaeda fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse "groups and ad hoc cells," has become a "Web-directed" phenomenon, as a presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts by longtime State Department expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence. [cyberwar]
• Katrina: The Politics of Incompetence and Decline
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  Commentary No. 169, Sept. 15, 2005 The entire world has been following with stupefaction the incredible performance of the U.S. federal government's response to the physical and human disaster of the hurricane Katrina. All the television networks of the U.S. and of many other countries plus all the major newspapers have been following the story in detail. The general reaction has been to ask how could the government of the richest and most powerful country in the world have reacted to this disaster as poorly as, or even much less well than, governments of poor Third World countries? The simple answer is a combination of incompetence and decline. And the results of this disaster will be a further diminution of respect for the president within the United States and a deepened skepticism in other countries about the United States's capacity to put action behind vacuous rhetoric.
  Another major factor is the political style of Bush and his associates. They made political appointments to all the top posts in the administration. There is nothing unusual in this, since all U.S. presidents do this. But what was different in the Bush style is that Bush and all his appointees were deeply suspicious of the political tendencies of the experienced bureaucrats in the government agencies.
  And since the U.S. is now estimated to need to increase its debt by $200 billion to do the necessary reconstruction, the Chinese and other buyers of treasury bonds must be getting more hesitant than ever about subsidizing the improvident Bush regime. But it is the image of the U.S. that will be the most affected. When El Salvador has to offer troops to help restore order in New Orleans because U.S. troops were so scarce and so slow in arriving, Iran cannot be quaking in its boots about a possible U.S. invasion. When Sweden has its relief planes sitting on the tarmac in Sweden for a week because it cannot get an answer from the U.S. government as to whether to send them, they are not going to be reassured about the ability of the U.S. to handle more serious geopolitical matters. And when conservative U.S. television commentators talk of the U.S. looking like a Third World country, Third World countries may begin to think that maybe there is a grain of truth in the description. [Softpower]
• Two fingers to America
  He's a friend of Fidel Castro, a fierce critic of the war in Iraq, and wants to spread revolutionary fervour throughout South America. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has long been a thorn in the side of the US - a fact highlighted this week when televangelist Pat Robertson called for his assassination. Richard Gott on a man at war with the White House Thursday August 25, 2005 The Guardian
• Two Major Airlines Seen Near Filing for Bankruptcy
  By MICHELINE MAYNARD Published: September 14, 2005 Two of the nation's biggest and most troubled airlines, Northwest and Delta, appeared likely to file for bankruptcy protection as soon as today, people briefed on the airlines' plans said yesterday.
  Both airlines have been hit hard by the spike in jet fuel prices this month and by the relentless competition in the industry. Filings by Northwest and Delta would mean that four of the seven major airlines would be operating under court protection, with the others being United and US Airways. Also, when several smaller bankrupt carriers are included, half the seats available on flights in the United States would be operated by bankrupt airlines, according to an estimate by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.
• Revealed: BAE's secret £1m to Pinochet
  US banking records show links between arms firm and ex-dictator continued until last year
  David Leigh and Rob Evans Thursday September 15, 2005 The Guardian
  Britain's biggest arms firm, BAE Systems, has been identified on US banking records as secretly paying more than £1m to General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. A Guardian investigation has revealed some of the money was listed as being paid through a front company in the British Virgin Islands, which BAE has used to channel commission on arms deals. Covert payments to Pinochet-linked groups are listed on documents compiled by the Chilean authorities and obtained by the Guardian. They record large payments from BAE as recently as last year. [Corruption]

• Afghanistan Agrees To Accept Detainees
  U.S. Negotiating Guantanamo Transfers By Josh White and Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, August 5, 2005; Page A01
  The Bush administration is negotiating the transfer of nearly 70 percent of the detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to three countries as part of a plan, officials said, to share the burden of keeping suspected terrorists behind bars. U.S. officials announced yesterday that they have reached an agreement with the government of Afghanistan to transfer most of its nationals to Kabul's "exclusive" control and custody. There are 110 Afghan detainees at Guantanamo and 350 more at the Bagram airfield near Kabul. Their transfers could begin in the next six months. [Rendition] [Human rights]
• A chilling message to Britons
  · Al-Qaida blames Blair and threatens more attacks · They are dark, dim and backwards, says Bush
  Brian Whitaker, Duncan Campbell and Rosie Cowan Friday August 5, 2005 The Guardian
  The second in command of Osama bin Laden's al- Qaida network issued a chilling warning of further attacks in the UK and America yesterday and blamed Tony Blair's involvement in the Iraq war for the atrocities in London on July 7. In a broadcast aired by al-Jazeera television exactly four weeks after blasts that killed 56 and injured hundreds, Ayman al-Zawahiri said that the prime minister's "policies brought you destruction in central London and will bring you more destruction". Neither Downing Street nor the Foreign Office would comment, but the message drew a sharp response from George Bush from his ranch in Texas. He said: "The comments by the number two man of al-Qaida make it clear Iraq is a part of this war on terror, and we're at war ... the people like Zawahiri have a ideology that is dark, dim, backwards. He's threatening. They have come up against a nation that will defend itself."
• Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is
  Decades of Makeovers Alter Apple to Its Core
  By Adrian Higgins Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 5, 2005; Page A01
  Consider the fate of America's favorite apple. It emerged from an Iowa orchard in 1880 as a round, blushed yellow fruit of surpassing sweetness. But like a figure in a TV makeover show, it was an apple that its handlers could not leave alone. They altered its shape. They made it firmer and more juicy. They made it so it could be stored in hermetically sealed warehouses for 12 months. Along the way, they changed its color and hence its name -- to Red Delicious.
  The only problem was the American consumer, whose verdict on the made-over apple has become increasingly clear: Of the two words in the Red Delicious name, one can no longer be believed.
• Civil War in Pakistan?
  By Philip Dorsey Iglauer Since the Pakistani military stepped up attacks against insurgents supporting al Qaeda in its federally administrated tribal region of Waristan, and throughout the country's seven tribal regions, support for al Qaeda appears to have stiffened. Political vitriol has escalated as well. Opposition lawmakers let loose a tirade against Pakistani strongman General Pervez Musharraf, accusing him of fighting a military campaign on home soil at the behest of Washington. ``We have plunged into such a war which has no end,'' said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the hard-line religious coalition Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, which holds power in the North West Frontier Province where the tribal areas are located. "The whole country is in the grip of uncertainty," he said. Does this mean civil war has broken out in Pakistan?
• President Sends Bolton to U.N.; Bypasses Senate
  By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: August 2, 2005
  WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - President Bush bypassed the Senate and installed John R. Bolton as his ambassador to the United Nations on Monday over strong Democratic objections that he was abusing power and undermining the credibility of the United States.
  In a brief announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr. Bush said he had been forced to act because the United States had gone for more than six months without an ambassador to the United Nations. It was the first time since the United Nations' founding in 1945 that the United States has filled that post using a recess appointment, a backdoor procedure that permits the president to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, as it is for August.
• The Perfect Solution!
  Washington D.C. . -- Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to overseas interests as of June 30th. The move is being made to save not only a significant portion of the President's $400K yearly salary, but also a record $521 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead.
• Terror suspect gives first account of London attack
  by Tony Thompson, Mark Townsend, Martin Bright and Barbara McMahon Rome Sunday July 31, 2005 The Observer
  One of the men accused of taking part in the failed terror attacks in London on 21 July has claimed the bomb plot was directly inspired by Britain's involvement in the Iraq war.
  In a remarkable insight into the motives behind the alleged would-be bombers, Hussain Osman, arrested in Rome on Friday, has revealed how the suspects watched hours of TV footage showing grief-stricken Iraqi widows and children alongside images of civilians killed in the conflict. He is alleged to have told prosecutors that after watching the footage: 'There was a feeling of hatred and a conviction that it was necessary to give a signal - to do something.'
• Grin and Bear It
  In an age of technology and terror, the British have come to accept surveillance cameras. Now they . . .
  Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page B01 Last summer, while my mother was visiting me in the United States, burglars broke into her house in rural England and emptied it of much of what she held most precious. The thieves knew just what they were after, the local bobbies told us as they searched the house for clues. They had carefully removed the most valuable pictures, ornaments and small pieces of furniture. And they were likely to be back with bigger ambitions and a bigger truck. One of the police recommendations? Install a closed circuit television camera (CCTV) in the house in the hope of getting mug shots of the intruders next time they came to help themselves to my mother's possessions.
  Britain has become the world's premier surveillance society. There are more than 4 million unblinking electronic eyes gazing down on shoppers and travelers across the country (though far, far fewer human brains are dedicated to deciphering the data those eyes record). London's railway stations are overseen by some 1,800 cameras, and another 6,000 are trained on the capital's underground train network and double-decker buses, catching the average commuter on videotape about 300 times a day.
  It's the very ubiquity of the technology that brought the world that chilling snapshot of the July 7 bombers sauntering through a station en route to mass murder, as well as the four close-ups of the July 21 terrorists fleeing their botched attempts to redouble the havoc. Yesterday, those close-ups were front-page news again, this time superimposed with the suspects' names and arrest dates.
  Some people have agonized about the Orwellian implications of such surreptitious surveillance, indulging in eye-in-the-sky speculation about the invasion of individuals' privacy. Developments such as face-recognition technology and computerized tracking of out-of-the-ordinary behavior have reawakened anxieties about Big Brother. [Human rights]

• Plans to attack Iran
  Deep Background August 1, 2005 Issue Copyright (c) 2005 The American Conservative
  In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing-that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack-but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
  Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates.
• Grief, anger and questions at funeral of Brazilian wrongly shot by police
  Tom Phillips in Gonzaga, Brazil Saturday July 30, 2005 The Guardian
  With a heavy grey fog hanging over the small rural town, thousands of Brazilians gathered yesterday in Gonzaga for the funeral of Jean Charles de Menezes, killed by British police last week.
  As the sun rose over cobbled roads, rumours were circulating that the Brazilian president, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, would appear at the funeral, along with the governor of Minas Gerais, Aecio Neves, himself tipped as a future president. "I hope he comes," said Rubens de Menezes, Jean Charles's cousin. "We need all this publicity to show exactly what the British police have done."
  Banners hung by locals on the steep path leading to the cemetery captured the feeling of revolt that has overcome this quiet countryside region. One read bluntly: "Jean Charles - a martyr of British terrorism."
• U.S. Evicted From Air Base In Uzbekistan
  By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, July 30, 2005; Page A01
  Uzbekistan formally evicted the United States yesterday from a military base that has served as a hub for combat and humanitarian missions to Afghanistan since shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pentagon and State Department officials said yesterday. In a highly unusual move, the notice of eviction from Karshi-Khanabad air base, known as K2, was delivered by a courier from the Uzbek Foreign Ministry to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, said a senior U.S. administration official involved in Central Asia policy. The message did not give a reason. Uzbekistan will give the United States 180 days to move aircraft, personnel and equipment, U.S. officials said.
• French Family Values
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 29, 2005
  Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures?
  Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly? The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe - France, in particular - shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance. We're talking about two highly productive societies that have made a different tradeoff between work and family time. And there's a lot to be said for the French choice.
• Brazilian did not wear bulky jacket
  Relatives say Met admits that, contrary to reports, electrician did not leap tube station barrier
  Mark Honigsbaum Thursday July 28, 2005 The Guardian
  Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday. Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27- year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong. "He used a travel card," she said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket
• Military's Opposition to Harsh Interrogation Is Outlined
  By NEIL A. LEWIS Published: July 28, 2005 WASHINGTON, July 27 - Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show. Despite the military lawyers' warnings, the task force concluded that military interrogators and their commanders would be immune from prosecution for torture under federal and international law because of the special character of the fight against terrorism. [Human rights]
• In Britain, a Divide Over Racial Profiling
  Mistaken Killing by Police Sets Off Debate
  By Glenn Frankel and Tamara Jones Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, July 27, 2005; Page A01
  LONDON, July 26 -- Seven bullets fired into a young Brazilian man's head by an undercover policeman who mistook him for a suicide bomber have set off an impassioned debate over the rights and wrongs of anti-terrorism tactics and racial profiling in one of the world's most ethnically diverse cities.
  Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician who had lived in London for three years, was gunned down execution-style -- seven bullets to the head, one to the shoulder -- in front of horrified passengers in a subway car standing Friday morning in London's Stockwell station. The officer firing at him presumed he was about to detonate a bomb after he ran from pursuing police. But as it turned out, Menezes had nothing to do with terrorism, as police conceded over the weekend.
  Beyond the killing itself, what shocked many Londoners was the discovery that Menezes had been killed under instructions that had never been publicly articulated, which allow officers to shoot in the head someone they believe is about to commit a suicide bombing. Code-named Operation Kratos, the policy was put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
  Former police commissioner John Stevens stunned many over the weekend when he wrote in a newspaper column that the policy had been imported from Israel, where the authorities had drawn a stark conclusion: "There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfill his mission: destroy his brain instantly, utterly."
  Some Londoners were not aware that a record number of police officers -- who once upon a time were famed for not being armed -- are now packing guns. According to the most recent figures, about 2,100 officers in London are licensed and trained in using submachine guns and pistols.
• Prison Experts See Opportunity For Improvement
  By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 26, 2005; Page A03
  NEWARK -- Sister Antonia Maguire, a Catholic nun who works in a New York state prison, told a story about an inmate named Cathy who complained every day for a week that she felt sick. At the prison clinic, she was given medicine for a cold, and hot tea. Refused permission to see a doctor, she grew worse. She begged her mother to contact the superintendent, Maguire said, but died before the call could be made. A post-mortem showed congestive heart failure. She was 32.
  "Not once did she see a doctor," Maguire said. "Not once did anyone put a stethoscope to her chest. Not once did anyone take her blood pressure."
  Maguire was speaking last week to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons as it pursued a year-long effort to illuminate life behind bars for 2.2 million inmates and the 750,000 men and women who staff the facilities. The idea behind the 21-member group is to identify problems and find salable ways to address them. The nation's prisons and jails have hardly been a source of innovation or good news in recent years, despite the estimated $60 billion spent annually on corrections [Human rights]
• Toyota, Moving Northward
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 25, 2005 Modern American politics is dominated by the doctrine that government is the problem, not the solution. In practice, this doctrine translates into policies that make low taxes on the rich the highest priority, even if lack of revenue undermines basic public services. You don't have to be a liberal to realize that this is wrong- headed. Corporate leaders understand quite well that good public services are also good for business. But the political environment is so polarized these days that top executives are often afraid to speak up against conservative dogma.
  Instead, they vote with their feet. Which brings us to the story of Toyota's choice. There has been fierce competition among states hoping to attract a new Toyota assembly plant. Several Southern states reportedly offered financial incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But last month Toyota decided to put the new plant, which will produce RAV4 mini-S.U.V.'s, in Ontario. Explaining why it passed up financial incentives to choose a U.S. location, the company cited the quality of Ontario's work force. What made Toyota so sensitive to labor quality issues? Maybe we should discount remarks from the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, who claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment. [FDI]
• Man shot in terror hunt was innocent young Brazilian
  Tony Thompson, Gaby Hinsliff and Alexandre Xavier Sunday July 24, 2005 The Observer
  A young Brazilian man, living and working in London as an electrician, emerged last night as the innocent victim shot dead by police in their hunt for the suicide bombers targeting the capital.
• Defying U.S. Efforts, Guerrillas in Iraq Refocus and Strengthen
  By DEXTER FILKINS and DAVID S. CLOUD Published: July 24, 2005
  BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 23 - They just keep getting stronger. Despite months of assurances that their forces were on the wane, the guerrillas and terrorists battling the American-backed enterprise here appear to be growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever.
  A string of recent attacks, including the execution of moderate Sunni leaders and the kidnapping of foreign diplomats, has brought home for many Iraqis that the democratic process that has been unfolding since the Americans restored Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004 has failed to isolate the insurgents and, indeed, has become the target itself.
• United States: the slide to disorder
  By Philip S Golub Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2005 The unilateralism of the United States - economic, commercial and military - is at odds with the multilateral reality of today's world. US politics of military supremacy contradicts its sacred principle of free markets. Will this be a turning point of history, like the one that marked the end of the first phase of capitalist globalisation, which lasted from 1880 to 1914? LATE 20th-century globalisation, understood as the unification of the world economy under a neoliberal model, appears exhausted. The symptoms are manifold: imperialist wars, rising nationalism, aggravated trade conflicts within and without the capitalist core, global social turbulence. Underlying all these are deep structural imbalances in the world economy and a universal widening of social inequalities within and between nations (1). These disintegrative trends are weakening, and may end up tearing apart, the schemes of interstate cooperation and the regimes of global governance that underpin the world capitalist order. They highlight the contradiction between the transnational character of capitalist expansion and the segmentation of the modern interstate system along national lines.
  In different ways these perspectives all suggested an epochal shift away from the power maximisation strategies of the modern nation-state, to a postmodern, post-national condition of globality. However, just as these concepts were being formulated, corrosive forces were secretly at work on the fragile foundations of the liberal capitalist world order. These are now clearly apparent. [Imperialism] [Globalisation]
• Iraqis Not Ready to Fight Rebels on Own, U.S. Says
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: July 21, 2005 WASHINGTON, July 20 - About half of Iraq's new police battalions are still being established and cannot conduct operations, while the other half of the police units and two-thirds of the new army battalions are only "partially capable" of carrying out counterinsurgency missions, and only with American help, according to a newly declassified Pentagon assessment.
• Special Branch to track Muslims across UK
  Vikram Dodd Wednesday July 20, 2005 The Guardian
  Special intelligence units are being planned across Britain to monitor Muslims so the authorities can collect "community by community" knowledge of where extremism is building up. The Guardian has learned that the special squads, to be known as Muslim Contact Units and staffed by Special Branch officers, will be established in areas including Yorkshire, north- west England and parts of the Midlands.
• Ministers warned of Iraq link to UK terror
  Richard Norton-Taylor, Vikram Dodd, and Hugh Muir Wednesday July 20, 2005 The Guardian
  Fresh evidence emerged yesterday that the government was privately warned by the intelligence agencies that the conflict in Iraq could provoke terrorist acts in Britain and compound anger among young British Muslims. A month before the July 7 London bombings, security and intelligence officials warned that "events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist- related activity in the UK".
• Two-thirds believe London bombings are linked to Iraq war
  Labour losing battle to convince public Julian Glover, political correspondent Tuesday July 19, 2005 The Guardian
  Two-thirds of Britons believe there is a link between Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq and the London bombings despite government claims to the contrary, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. The poll makes it clear that voters believe further attacks in Britain by suicide bombers are also inevitable, with 75% of those responding saying there will be more attacks. The research suggests the government is losing the battle to persuade people that terrorist attacks on the UK have not been made more likely by the invasion of Iraq.
  According to the poll, 33% of Britons think the prime minister bears "a lot" of responsibility for the London bombings and a further 31% "a little".
• Cartoon: Steve Bell on the Iraq link to the London bombings
• Foreign scientists barred amid terror fears
  Ian Sample, Matthew Taylor and Polly Curtis Tuesday July 19, 2005 The Guardian
  Security services have barred more than 200 foreign scientists from studying at British universities over the past four years, amid fears they could present a terrorist threat, the Guardian has learned. The scientists were among more than 2,000 vetted after applying to universities to do postgraduate or post-doctoral research in fields such as chemistry, microbiology and biotechnology
• Sticky Fingers The Making of Halliburton
  By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
  There's no more pungent symbol of the corrupt nature of the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq than Halliburton, the Houston, Texas-based oil services conglomerate, which has made billions from the war even in the face of charges of massive overbilling, shoddy work, official bribery and political influence-peddling.
  The remarkable thing is that Halliburton's looting of Iraq and the US treasury happened in broad daylight, right under the nose of the press, the Democrats and Michael Moore, who made Dick Cheney's former company the bete noir of his film "9/11." Nothing deterred the company from capitalizing on the war it helped orchestrate.
  This is an excerpt from Jeffrey St. Clair's forthcoming book, Grand Theft Pentagon (Common Courage, 2005). [corruption]
• Tube bombs 'linked to Iraq conflict'
  · Thinktank says war boosts al-Qaida · Blair dismisses connection
  David Hencke, Westminster correspondent Monday July 18, 2005 The Guardian
  Britain's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the terrorist attacks in London, a respected independent thinktank on foreign affairs, the Chatham House organisation, says today. According to the body, which includes leading academics and former civil servants among its members, the key problem in the UK for preventing terrorism is that the country is "riding as a pillion passenger with the United States in the war against terror".
  In the most politically sensitive finding, Chatham House, which used to be known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, concludes there is "no doubt" the invasion of Iraq has "given a boost to the al-Qaida network" in "propaganda, recruitment and fundraising", while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. "Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign." This finding runs counter to the line from Downing Street, which has sought to detach Iraq from the London attacks. On Saturday, Tony Blair said the fanatics who struck in London and launched other attacks around the world were driven by an "evil ideology" rather than opposition to any policy, and that it would be a "misunderstanding of a catastrophic order" to think that if we changed our behaviour they would change theirs.
• FBI Monitored Web Sites for 2004 Protests
  Groups Criticize Agency's Surveillance for Terror Unit By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 18, 2005; Page A03
  FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit, according to FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to the documents as evidence that the Bush administration has reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States by blurring the distinction between terrorism and political protest.
• Bush's POW-MIA Chief Accused of Abuse
  Tuesday July 12, 2005 10:16 PM By ROBERT BURNS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The man leading the Defense Department's search for missing American service members is being investigated by the Pentagon for allegations of abusive management, The Associated Press has learned. The accusations include reprisals against subordinates and sexual harassment of a female employee, according to Pentagon officials familiar with the inquiry. Jerry D. Jennings, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, also has been accused by groups outside government of undermining his own office's mission of accounting for service members considered missing in action. They say he has alienated families of the missing and demoralized his staff.
• Terror hunt 'to take decades'
  · Senior police officers admit long-term failure to infiltrate Islamist extremists · Top-level inquiry looms into intelligence operations
  Gaby Hinsliff, David Rose, Martin Bright and Ned Temko Sunday July 17, 2005 The Observer Britain's most senior police officers believe that it will 'take decades' to successfully tackle British Islamist terror networks because of a failure to penetrate extremists in the Muslim community. Senior police sources have said that the current state of knowledge about Islamic terrorism is comparable to that gathered on the IRA in the early Seventies, when it struck almost with impunity.
• No 10 blocks envoy's book on Iraq
  Martin Bright and Peter Beaumont Sunday July 17, 2005 The Observer
  A controversial fly-on-the wall account of the Iraq war by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats has been blocked by Downing Street and the Foreign Office.
  Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted. In an extract seen by The Observer, Greenstock describes the American decision to go to war as 'politically illegitimate' and says that UN negotiations 'never rose over the level of awkward diversion for the US administration'. Although he admits that 'honourable decisions' were made to remove the threat of Saddam, the opportunities of the post-conflict period were 'dissipated in poor policy analysis and narrow-minded execution'.
• Plan Called for Covert Aid in Iraq Vote
  By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER Published: July 17, 2005
  WASHINGTON, July 16 - In the months before the Iraqi elections in January, President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties, but rescinded the proposal because of Congressional opposition, current and former government officials said Saturday.
  In a statement issued in response to questions about a report in the next issue of The New Yorker, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office." The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favored by Washington, an issue about which the White House declined to elaborate.
  The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports that the administration proceeded with the covert plan over the Congressional objections
• In Egypt's Countryside, Farmers' Anger Seen As 'Silent Time Bomb'
  Recent Revolt Over Rents and Evictions Draws Support of Mubarak Opponents By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 17, 2005; Page A16
  SARANDO, Egypt -- Tractors are a rare sight in the Nile River delta, where tenant farmers still labor with hand and hoe, so the arrival of three loud machines in early March created a stir in an already volatile community. Sarando peasants had been feuding bitterly with a landlord over rents and evictions
  Whether city or country, farm or factory, dissatisfaction with President Hosni Mubarak is palpable as his quarter-century of rule nears its end, either by the weight of failed policies or by the logic of his age, 77.
• Lest We Forget; These Were Blair's Bombs
  By John Pilger t r u t h o u t | Perspective Sunday 10 July 2005
  In all the coverage of last week's bombing of London, a basic truth is struggling to be heard. It is this: no one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life", which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled. Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target". A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded it instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
• Invasion reduced the threat of terror
  A new political response is needed that has more to do with engaging communities than restricting liberties
  Brian Brivati Tuesday July 12, 2005 The Guardian Would 7/7 have happened, and would it have been more or less deadly, if we had not liberated Afghanistan and Iraq? Should our policy be changed now? Is it time to run and hide? The invasion of Afghanistan significantly reduced the capability of the old al-Qaida by removing the only regime it controlled. The invasion of Iraq acted as a deterrent to states that were nurturing a new generation of loosely affiliated "network terrorists".
  Syria and Iran have been energetic sponsors of terror networks - as David Bryman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the 9/11 commission, proves in Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism; and the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq made them pause to think about what they might gain and lose by continuing to be state sponsors of terror.
  Brian Brivati is professor of contemporary history at Kingston University. [Bizarre]
• Lucky Sweden Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed
  By ROBERT FISK
  July 9 / 10, 2005
  "If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in a recent videotape, "we will bomb yours."' It was clear Britain would be a target ever since British Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to join President Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G-8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
  It's no use Blair telling us, "They will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear." They are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear." They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, out of his alliance with the United States, out of his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush -- and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives -- while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.
• Email spying 'could have stopped killers'
  Sunday July 10, 2005 The Observer Millions of personal email and mobile phone records could be stored and shared with police and intelligence officials across Europe to help thwart terrorist attacks. The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, will propose new measures at an emergency meeting of European Union interior ministers which will discuss the implications of Thursday's London bombings. He raised the stakes dramatically by claiming they could 'quite possibly' have helped prevent such attacks, by identifying in advance suspicious patterns of behaviour by potential terrorists.
  The move comes as The Observer can also reveal that the National Crime Squad has contacted internet service providers in the UK, appealing for them to preserve email messages in case they prove useful to the manhunt. The messages could include highly personal information. [human rights]
• Oil 'will hit $100 by winter'
  Worst-ever crisis looms, says analyst · Surging demand to keep prices high Heather Stewart, economics correspondent Sunday July 3, 2005 The Observer
  Oil prices could rocket to $100 within six months, plunging the world into an unprecedented fuel crisis, controversial Texan oil analyst Matt Simmons has warned. After crude surged through $60 a barrel last week, nervous investors were pinning their hopes on a build-up in US oil-stocks to depress prices in the coming months. But Simmons believes surging demand will keep prices bubbling well above $50. 'We could be at $100 by this winter. We have the biggest risk we have ever had of demand exceeding supply. We are now just about to face up to the biggest crisis we have ever had,' he said.
  However, the Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that oil prices will peak by the end of this year, and decline by 10 per cent in 2006 as the Chinese economy slows, reducing demand. Chinese imports have been crucial to propping up the oil price in the last two years.
• The Right's Moment, Years in the Making
  By Thomas B. Edsall and Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page A01
  With the Supreme Court vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the conservative movement has within its grasp the prize it has sought for more than 40 years: the control of all levers of the federal government. From the ashes of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, conservatives have built an enduring governing majority, with Republicans winning seven of 10 presidential contests and holding unified control of Congress for 11 years.
  The judiciary has until now been alone in clinging to liberalism and the remnants of the Democratic New Deal coalition. A series of Republican appointments to the Supreme Court -- John Paul Stevens, O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter -- have disappointed conservatives by frequently siding with the court's liberal bloc.
  That could well happen again with O'Connor's replacement, but conservatives are cautiously hopeful it will not. President Bush has indicated that he will appoint a justice in the tradition of Antonin Scalia, a conservative stalwart. And the conservative movement has something it lacked during its losing battle for the confirmation of Robert H. Bork to the court 18 years ago: a highly coordinated movement that has fused the big dollars of economic conservatives with the grass-roots clout of millions of religious conservatives.
• A nation on the move: thousands prepare to march and dance
  John Vidal and Gerald Seenan Saturday July 2, 2005
  The big white bus - it had to be big because so many people wanted to get on, and it had to be white because that's the colour of the Make Poverty History alliance - left London at 9.30 yesterday morning full of hope and rucksacks. It headed north on a day when the whole of Britain seemed to be preparing to move, with half a million or more people expected to be at a G8 protest, concert or demonstration today. Even as some 100,000 people from the south of England set off to the north to save the world, another 100,000 were believed to be travelling to the capital in the hope of hearing Bob Geldof and Madonna at the Hyde Park Live 8 gig. To add to the confusion, thousands of African music lovers were heading to the Eden Project in Cornwall and 30,000 people were expected at the Gay Pride parade in London.
  "It's a right merry go round," said Jim Francis, a bus driver waiting to pick people up at King's Cross. "People don't know if they're coming or going". Demonstrators heading to Scotland faced a long day. Ten hours on the motorway followed by a sleepless night on a hard floor in some Edinburgh hall, a short walk and then 10 hours back. Fay Miah, a young graduate who had given up a day's holiday to go north, said: "I'm a bit cynical about what the world leaders will actually do next week, but yes, I am sure we will make a difference just by going there." Churches and charity groups yesterday said that they were confident that the Edinburgh anti- poverty march would go as planned, with the march around the city designed so that people would be completing the route as others set off, giving a sense of a great white bandage around the city - or total confusion. But privately they were not certain that everyone would want to hear 25 faith, trade union and other speakers, who most people had never heard of. Of course, they'd prefer rockers, but they'll all be somewhere else," said one charity worker who asked not to be named. As the first protesters began arriving in Edinburgh yesterday, some shops in the city were already boarding up their windows. H&M and a local jewellers were among the first to batten down the hatches. In Stirling, the Hor-i-zone alternative living space was also beginning to fill with protesters.
  The eco-village is attracting anarchist visitors from as far away as the US and New Zealand. The camp is as close to the Gleneagles summit as organisers are prepared to allow protesters.
• A Scotsman With the Gifts of Gab and Jab
  By LIZETTE ALVAREZ Published: July 2, 2005 LONDON
  INCORRIGIBLE to the core, George Galloway is used to being threatened, ousted, libeled, filleted in the press and just plain reviled. Over the years, the grand-père terrible of British politics has been called corrupt and treacherous; labeled an apologist for Saddam Hussein, a claim he forcefully rejects; portrayed as a Louis Vuitton-toting Socialist; and dismissed as a self-aggrandizing Labor Party turncoat. Skip to next paragraph
  "I could show you my scars," Mr. Galloway, 50, said from inside the ramshackle room where he sat, the stubby end of his Montecristo cigar a reassuring arm's reach away. "I am swimming against the stream. As Dr. Johnson once said, 'The grimmest dictatorship is the dictatorship of the prevailing orthodoxy,' and I am fighting that orthodoxy. It's not that I relish it. It's that I am not afraid of it." But since his appearance in May before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, where to the delight of many here and in America he flung scorn at two senators over Iraq, vilification has shifted to a modicum of admiration (even if it is grudging, at least in Britain).
  HE had "underestimated the American people," he said, and overestimated the competence of American politicians. "I am searching for words that are not insulting. I was very underimpressed," Mr. Galloway said. "I think America treats politicians like nobility, and that's certainly not how they are treated here." A result is that American political arguments are "not properly tested." For example, a few Americans who sent e-mail began by apologizing for not knowing his title and for calling him Mr. Galloway, "like they should be saying the right honorable." Then he smirked, and added, "This is quite amusing, because Mr. Galloway is usually the nicest thing I am called."
• U.S. Searches for Troops In NE Afghan Mountains
  Officials Say Team's Fate Still Unknown By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 2, 2005; Page A01
  KABUL, Afghanistan, July 1 -- U.S. forces continued a massive hunt Friday for a missing military team in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, three days after a Special Operations helicopter bringing troops to rescue the men crashed amid enemy fire, killing all 16 service members aboard.
  The incident came as U.S. and Afghan forces face growing violence from insurgent groups that appear to be numerous, well-equipped and intent on undermining Afghanistan's modicum of stability after two decades of civil strife, foreign military occupation and religious repression. At the same time, an increase in street crime, gang violence, kidnappings of foreign aid workers, murders of Afghans who support the U.S.-backed government and continued high levels of drug crop cultivation and trafficking have added to a sense of insecurity in the country
• Kissinger Apologizes for '71 Remarks About I. Gandhi
  Associated Press Saturday, July 2, 2005; Page A23 NEW DELHI, July 1 -- Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, who derided Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in a private conversation with President Nixon in 1971, expressed regret in an interview broadcast Friday and insisted that the comments should be viewed in the context of the Cold War. The transcript of the conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, his national security adviser, in the Oval Office on Nov. 5, 1971, was declassified Tuesday and made front-page news across India. They discussed Nixon's meeting with Gandhi on the previous day.
  "We really slobbered over the old witch," Nixon told Kissinger. Nixon's remark came as the two men speculated about Gandhi's motives and discussed India's intentions in a looming conflict with neighboring Pakistan. The United States was allied with Pakistan and saw India as too close to its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. "The Indians are bastards anyway," Kissinger responded to Nixon. "They are starting a war there. . . . While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted, too. She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she's got to go to war."
• America Held Hostage
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 1, 2005
  A majority of Americans now realize that President Bush deliberately misled the nation to promote a war in Iraq. But Mr. Bush's speech on Tuesday contained a chilling message: America has been taken hostage by his martial dreams. According to Mr. Bush, the nation now has no choice except to keep fighting the war he wanted to fight.
  Never mind that Iraq posed no threat before we invaded. Now it's a "central front in the war on terror," Mr. Bush says, quoting Osama bin Laden as an authority. And since a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would, Mr. Bush claims, be a victory for Al Qaeda, Americans have to support this war - and that means supporting him. After all, you wage war with the president you have, not the president you want. But America doesn't have to let itself be taken hostage
• Canadian's Lawyers Blame U.S.
  Agents Accused of Sending Man to Syria for Torture in '02
  By Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, July 1, 2005; Page A14
  OTTAWA, June 30 -- Attorneys for Maher Arar said Thursday that Canadian criminal charges should be brought against U.S. agents responsible for spiriting the Canadian man in 2002 to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured for almost a year. Drawing parallels to the charges brought against CIA operatives by a Milan magistrate last week, attorney Marlys Edwardh said Canadian law defined torture as illegal wherever it occurs. Arar, 34, was seized by U.S. agents while he was changing planes in New York, questioned for 12 days and then transported in shackles to Syria.
  "Torture is a crime that is triable by Canadian courts if the victim is a Canadian citizen. The Americans definitely aided and abetted this crime," Edwardh said, standing outside the site of a judicial inquiry into Arar's treatment
• Mr. Bush's War
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 164, July 1, 2005
• Mood of Anxiety Engulfs Afghans as Violence Rises
  By CARLOTTA GALL Published: June 30, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan, June 29 - The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.
  Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.
• Italy Knew About Plan To Grab Suspect
  CIA Officials Cite Briefing in 2003 By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 30, 2005; Page A01 Before a CIA paramilitary team was deployed to snatch a radical Islamic cleric off the streets of Milan in February 2003, the CIA station chief in Rome briefed and sought approval from his counterpart in Italy, according to three CIA veterans with knowledge of the operation and a fourth who reviewed the matter after it took place. The previously undisclosed Italian involvement undercuts the accusation, which has fueled public resentment in Italy toward the United States, that the CIA brashly slipped into the country unannounced and uninvited to kidnap an Italian resident off the street.
  In fact, former and current CIA officials said, both the CIA and the Italian service agreed beforehand that if the unusual operation was to become public, as it has, neither side would confirm its involvement, a standard agreement the CIA makes with foreign intelligence services over covert operations. [Abductees]

• Bush evokes 9/11 to bolster Iraq war
  Terror link used to rally sceptical US public
  Julian Borger in Washington and Rory Carroll in Baghdad Wednesday June 29, 2005 The Guardian
  George Bush last night rallied Americans to the cause of the Iraq war, urging them not to forget the lessons of September 11" and arguing the fight was vital to future US security. Addressing the nation from Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, President Bush confronted head on America's growing pessimism and uncertainty over the war. Again and again in his primetime speech, the president attempted to bind the Iraq counter- insurgency to the broader "war on terror" started the September 11 attacks, trying to rebuild a connection in the public mind that has given way to scepticism about the justification for the invasion.
• From Memos, Insights Into Ally's Doubts On Iraq War
  British Advisers Foresaw Variety of Risks, Problems
  By Glenn Frankel Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Page A01
  LONDON -- In the spring of 2002, two weeks before British Prime Minister Tony Blair journeyed to Crawford, Tex., to meet with President Bush at his ranch about the escalating confrontation with Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sounded a prescient warning.
  "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few," Straw wrote in a March 25 memo to Blair stamped "Secret and Personal." "The risks are high, both for you and for the Government."
  In public, British officials were declaring their solidarity with the Bush administration's calls for elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Straw's memo and seven other secret documents disclosed in recent months by British journalist Michael Smith together reveal a much different picture. Behind the scenes, British officials believed the U.S. administration was already committed to a war that they feared was ill-conceived and illegal and could lead to disaster.
• Victory by Hard-Liner in Iran Could Widen Rift With U.S.
  By DAVID E. SANGER Published: June 26, 2005 WASHINGTON, June 25 - Even before Iranians went to the polls in their presidential election, the Bush administration declared the process rigged, saying that no matter what the outcome, Iran would be truly ruled by men who "spread terror across the world."
  Yet almost no one in Washington expected the landslide victory of the conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran's next president. And now, facing a populist who came to age in the student union that took over the American Embassy in 1979, the administration is bracing for a long, hot summer of confrontation with Iran, first over its nuclear programs, then over terrorism, and perhaps over the fueling of the insurgency in Iraq.
• In Italy, Anger at U.S. Tactics Colors Spy Case
  By STEPHEN GREY and DON VAN NATTA Jr. Published: June 26, 2005 MILAN, June 25 - The extraordinary decision by an Italian judge to order the arrest of 13 people linked to the Central Intelligence Agency on charges of kidnapping a terrorism suspect here dramatizes a growing rift between American counterterrorism officials and their counterparts in Europe.
  The kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, the leader of a militant Milan mosque, led to Italy's case against 13 people with C.I.A. links. European counterterrorism officials have pursued a policy of building criminal cases against terrorism suspects through surveillance, wire- taps, detective work and the criminal justice system. The United States, however, has frequently used other means since Sept. 11, 2001, including renditions - abducting terror suspects from foreign countries and transporting them for questioning to third countries, some of which are known to use torture. Those two approaches seem to have collided in the case of an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, or Abu Omar, who led a militant mosque in Milan. [Abductees]
• Taliban Death Toll Rises
  By REUTERS Published: June 26, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan, June 25 (Reuters) - A total of 178 Taliban fighters were killed and 56 captured in three days of fighting in southern Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry said Saturday. But senior Taliban commanders who were thought to be in the area escaped, said Muhammad Ishaq Paiman, the spokesman for the ministry. The Interior Ministry, which on Friday gave a toll of 109 guerrillas dead, said most were killed by American airstrikes in the area where the provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul meet. The American military's most recent estimate, on Wednesday, was that 40 to 50 guerrillas had been killed. [Evidence]
• America's neo-conservative world supremacists will fail
  Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties
  Eric Hobsbawm Saturday June 25, 2005 The Guardian
  Three continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR. This hegemony no longer rests on the sheer size of the US economy. Large though this is, it has declined since 1945 and its relative decline continues. It is no longer the giant of global manufacturing. The centre of the industrialised world is rapidly shifting to the eastern half of Asia. Unlike older imperialist countries, and unlike most other developed industrial countries, the US has ceased to be a net exporter of capital, or indeed the largest player in the international game of buying up or establishing firms in other countries, and the financial strength of the state rests on the continued willingness of others, mostly Asians, to maintain an otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit.
  It is reasonably certain that the project will fail. However, while it continues, it will go on making the world an intolerable place for those directly exposed to US armed occupation and an unsafer place for the rest of us. · Eric Hobsbawm is author of The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century 1914-1991. This is an edited extract from his preface to a new edition of VG Kiernan's America: The New Imperialism
• Thirteen With the C.I.A. Sought by Italy in a Kidnapping
  By STEPHEN GREY and DON VAN NATTA Published: June 25, 2005 MILAN, June 24 - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 officers and operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency on charges that they seized an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and flew him to Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said Friday.
  The judge, Chiara Nobili of Milan, signed the arrest warrants on Wednesday for 13 C.I.A. operatives who are suspected of seizing an imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to his mosque here for noon prayers on Feb. 17, 2003. [Abductees]
• The War President
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: June 24, 2005 VIENNA In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero. America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion. Skip to next paragraph
  But after 9/11 President Bush, with obvious relish, declared himself a "war president." And he kept the nation focused on martial matters by morphing the pursuit of Al Qaeda into a war against Saddam Hussein. In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right. Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn't turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won't be able to get out of that quagmire until we face up to the reality of how we got in.

• New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action
  Probe Finds 'Rendition' Of Terror Suspects Illegal By Craig Whitlock
  Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01 STOCKHOLM -- The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.
  Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners' clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men's mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.
  So began an operation the CIA calls an "extraordinary rendition," the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections. The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to "degrading and inhuman treatment" and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.
  "I can say that we were surprised when a crew stepped out of the plane that seemed to be very professional, that had obviously done this before," [human rights] [Abductees]
• US double standards claim over Cuban militant
  Hypocrisy alleged over treatment of exile wanted for air bombing Jamie Wilson in Washington Friday May 20, 2005 The Guardian
  Luis Posada, the ageing anti-Castro militant wanted in Venezuela and Cuba over an airliner bombing 30 years ago, was yesterday charged with illegally entering the US, in a case that has led to claims of double standards by Washington in the war on terror.
  US law does not allow extradition to Cuba or to countries believed to be acting on its behalf. [human rights]
• Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens)
  By GEORGE GALLOWAY Before the hearing began, the independent MP for Bethnal Green and Bow had some scorn to bestow generously upon the pro-war writer Christopher Hitchens. "You're a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay," Mr Galloway informed him. "Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink," he added later, ignoring Mr Hitchens's questions and staring intently ahead. "And you're a drink-soaked ..." Eventually Mr Hitchens gave up. "You're a real thug, aren't you?" he hissed, stalking away. --The Guardian
  Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
• 'I am not, nor have I ever been, an oil trader'
  Surrounded by journalists and politics students, Respect MP turns Washington hearing into an indictment of the invasion of Iraq Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday May 18, 2005 The Guardian
  George Galloway confronted his accusers in the US senate yesterday, denying any involvement in Iraqi oil trades and using the occasion to unleash an indictment of the war with a stunning ferocity. Mr Galloway, the newly elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was appearing before the senate investigations sub-committee examining sanctions- busting oil deals in Iraq before the war.
  Then it was the Respect party leader's turn and any sense of judicial propriety was instantly shattered. The courtroom became a vaudeville theatre, as the MP lampooned his interrogators, accusing them of making "schoolboy howler" mistakes. Mr Galloway insisted that he was entirely innocent. "Senator, I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," he declared, in language that deliberately echoed that of Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt conducted half a century ago just metres from the chamber used for yesterday's hearing. "I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," he said. The wide, wood-panelled room was packed with journalists and spectators. A group of politics students stood at the back. The turnout among senators was less spectacular, however. Only four appeared for the start of the hearing. By the time Mr Galloway took the microphone, there were only two left, Mr Coleman and Carl Levin, the leading Democrat on the panel. Witnesses in this august setting, a little below and surrounded by the horseshoe bench of powerful senators, are usually awed and almost always on the defensive. Mr Galloway was on the attack from the first moment. He entered the hearing room with guns blazing, telling journalists his inquisi tors were "crazed", "pro-war", "lickspittles" of the president, and predicting he would turn the tables on them. "I want to put these people on trial. This group of neo-cons is involved in the mother of smokescreens," he said. That was the common theme in a feat of bare- knuckled rhetoric not often witnessed by the senators, who are accustomed to considerably more reverence for their positions. CNN called it a "blistering attack on senators rarely heard or seen on Capitol Hill". Mr Galloway deflected every charge against him and flung it back at the Bush administration and the US congress. For example, he denied the committee's claim that he had met Saddam many times, claiming there had only been two such meetings - and that the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had met the then Iraqi president the same number of times, to sell arms, Mr Galloway said.
• Anti-Castro Militant's Arrest Puts U.S. in a Bind
  Administration Mindful Of Fla. Cuban Exile Politics By Manuel Roig-FranziaWashington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page A02 MIAMI, May 17 -- Luis Posada Carriles escaped a Venezuelan prison in his late fifties and sneaked into the United States without papers in his late seventies. He has survived a bullet to the jaw and beaten charges in Venezuela that he masterminded the terrorist bombing of a Cuban airliner. But Posada's penchant for slipping out of tough jams seemed to run its course Tuesday in Miami, where the aging militant and vehement opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro was arrested by U.S. immigration officers, setting off an international diplomatic controversy. The arrest creates a dilemma for the Bush administration, which has taken a strong stand against terrorism in all forms but has also been reluctant to cross the politically potent Cuban exile community in South Florida, many of whom support Posada.
  Cuban President Fidel Castro, center, leads a march to the American mission in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, May 17, 2005. Hundreds of thousands of Cuban protest in front of the Office of Interests of U.S in a massive march to demand that the United States arrest Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who is sought in Venezuela on charges of helping bomb a civilian airliner in 1976, killing 73 people. (AP Photo/Jorge Rey) (Jorge Rey - AP)
  Venezuelan officials demanded that Posada be extradited for a new trial on charges related to a 1976 bombing of a civilian airliner that killed 73 Cubans and Venezuelans over the Bahamas. And in Cuba, where 1 million people marched through Havana demanding Posada's arrest hours before he was taken into custody, top allies of Castro pressured the Bush administration. [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'
  Report claims blind eye was turned to sanctions busting by American firms Julian Borger and Jamie Wilson in Washington Tuesday May 17, 2005 The Guardian
  The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation. A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them. The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua. In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.
• Newsweek apology fails to cool Qur'an anger
  Declan Walsh in Islamabad Tuesday May 17, 2005 The Guardian
  Newsweek's apology for its controversial Qur'an desecration story was greeted with scepticism and scorn both at home in the US and across the Muslim world yesterday. From the White House to remote Afghan hamlets, critics responded furiously to the magazine's initial admission that it had been wrong to claim US officials discovered that interrogators in Guantánamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Qur'an down the toilet. Following criticisms yesterday from the White House and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, Newsweek made a full retraction of the story. "Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay," the editor, Mark Whitaker, said in a statement. In Afghanistan, where the 200-word story sparked riots that left 17 dead and more than 100 injured, many Muslims said the apology smacked of a US government cover-up. [Media]
• After week of riots, Newsweek admits it got Qur'an story wrong
  Dan Glaister in Los Angeles and Declan Walsh in Islamabad Monday May 16, 2005 The Guardian
  Newsweek magazine yesterday admitted it had got its facts wrong on a story alleging that American military interrogators had desecrated copies of the Qur'an, after a week of protests about the article left at least 17 people dead and more than 100 injured. The report last week, alleging that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Qur'an down a toilet, sparked protests across the Islamic world. [media]
• John Bolton: The Manchurian Nominee?
  By Philip Dorsey Iglauer To look at the politics surrounding Undersecretary of State John Bolton, images of John Frankenheimer's prescient ``The Manchurian Candidate,'' a Cold War film about communists brainwashing a Korean War POW into becoming a political assassin come to mind. Bolton is a lot like Angela Lansbury's character _ part Lady MacBeth, part Iago _ Mrs. Iselin, who controls the brainwashed assassin like a puppet master. Bolton will say and do anything to get what he wants, bending facts and threatening and bullying subordinates to serve his extremist worldview. Worst of all, however, all his machinations are toward a bellicose agenda, which is diametrically opposed to the best interests of the U.S. and Asia.
  It is as if Bolton planned to scuttle negotiations by provoking Pyongyang all along, though it is not difficult to provoke the cantankerous `Dear Leader' adherents [Vituperation]
• Staying What Course?
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 16, 2005 Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.
  There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.
  Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world. But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport?
  But the American military isn't just bogged down in Iraq; it's deteriorating under the strain. We may already be in real danger: what threats, exactly, can we make against the North Koreans? That John Bolton will yell at them? And every year that the war goes on, our military gets weaker.
• Anger as US backs brutal regime
  Human rights concerns as troops put down uprising in Uzbekistan Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow and Paul Harris in New York Sunday May 15, 2005 The Observer
  Heated criticism was growing last night over 'double standards' by Washington over human rights, democracy and 'freedom' as fresh evidence emerged of just how brutally Uzbekistan, a US ally in the 'war on terror', put down Friday's unrest in the east of the country. Outrage among human rights groups followed claims by the White House on Friday that appeared designed to justify the violence of the regime of President Islam Karimov, claiming - as Karimov has - that 'terrorist groups' may have been involved in the uprising. Critics said the US was prepared to support pro- democracy unrest in some states, but condemn it in others where such policies were inconvenient.
• 'Martyrs' In Iraq Mostly Saudis
  Web Sites Track Suicide Bombings By Susan B. Glasser Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A01
  Before Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball, he was young and interested only in "fooling around." Like many Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep," according to a posting on a jihadist Web site.
  On April 11, he died as a suicide bomber, part of a coordinated insurgent attack on a U.S. Marine base in the western Iraq city of Qaim. Just two days later, "the Martyrdom" of Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani was announced on the Internet, the latest requiem for a young Saudi man who had clamored to follow "those 19 heroes" of Sept. 11 and had found in Iraq an accessible way to die.[Victim] [Media]
• Marine's Shooting of Iraqis Justified, Probe Concludes
  New York Daily News Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A24 NEW YORK -- A Marine officer who killed two Iraqi prisoners should be cleared of dereliction of duty and murder charges that carried a possible death sentence, a formal military probe has concluded. Lt. Col. Mark E. Winn, the investigating officer, called the April 15, 2004, shooting by 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano justified and said it fell within the rules of combat in the Sunni Triangle. In a report dated Thursday, Winn urged that all felony charges be dropped.
  Prosecutors maintained that the former Wall Street trader, 33, executed the unarmed detainees as they knelt with their backs turned. The victims were captured as they fled an insurgent mortar position. [human rights]
• "Putin's Diplomatic Triumph"
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No.161, May 15, 2005
  Was it really George W. Bush who was the guest of honor at the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of V-E Day in Moscow on May 8, 2005? Did he really stand on Red Square next to Putin to review goose-stepping Russian troops carrying hammer-and-sickle banners with the image of Lenin while Russian jets roared overhead? I think the world press has underplayed the monumental character of this event. How is it that the major event of this sixtieth anniversary was celebrated in Moscow, and not in Washington, London, Paris, or anywhere else? How come everyone came? By everyone, I mean the presidents of France, China, Israel, the prime ministers of Germany, Italy, Japan, India, South Korea, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and assorted other representatives of some fifty countries. The only major world figure not to come in person was the Prime Minister of Great Britain (too busy perhaps with salving his wounds after a narrow electoral victory that was less than glorious). Also missing were top echelon figures from North Korea (perhaps anxious not to be forced into a meeting on the side of the six-nation group discussing nuclear armaments).
• Galloway to face US hearing
  MP to fly to Washington to deny profiting from oil for food scandal David Pallister and Jamie Wilson in Washington Friday May 13, 2005 The Guardian
  The independent MP George Galloway will fly to Washington next week to give televised evidence to the Senate committee which accused him of profiting from the sale of Iraqi oil. Even before the Senate exchange, which promises to be rumbustious, the hostilities opened yesterday with the MP claiming the committee had failed to respond to emails and letters asking for an opportunity to rebut the allegations. In reply, a committee spokesman insisted Mr Galloway had never contacted them by any means "including but not limited to telephone, fax, email, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon".
• Violent Uprising Breaks Out in Uzbekistan
  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 13, 2005 Filed at 4:05 a.m. ET ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan (AP) -- Thousands of people, many of them armed, took to the streets of an eastern Uzbek city on Friday, demanding freedom for 23 prominent businessmen on trial for alleged ties to an Islamic terror group. The protest quickly turned violent, with nine people reported killed and dozens wounded in clashes with police.
• Afghan Protest Against the U.S. Becomes Violent
  By CARLOTTA GALL Published: May 12, 2005 KABUL, Afghanistan, May 11 - Four protesters were killed and more than 60 injured Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad as the police and troops struggled to contain the worst anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan in the more than three years since the fall of the Taliban.
  Students in Jalalabad protested a reported desecration of a Koran. Government officials said the violence appeared to have been planned and that religious hard-liners and armed men had usurped what had started as a student protest. At least a dozen buildings were ransacked and burned, including the governor's office, several other government buildings, the United Nations mission compound and a number of offices belonging to aid groups. Afghan policemen and troops, together with some American forces, eventually quelled the riots, but not before opening fire on protesters, who numbered in the thousands, residents said. Foreigners were evacuated from the city as their offices came under attack, and the air filled with smoke and gunfire, but no injuries to foreigners were reported. The demonstrations were started on Tuesday by students angered by a report in Newsweek that American interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention center had desecrated the Koran by flushing a copy down the toilet. It was unclear how the protesters got word of the report, but many Afghans receive their news from radio programs broadcast in local languages by Voice of America, the BBC and Radio Liberty, which often broadcast foreign news reports.
• Demise of a Hard-Fighting Squad
  Marines Who Survived Ambush Are Killed, Wounded in Blast By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, May 12, 2005; Page A01 HABAN, Iraq, May 11 -- The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.
  In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had ceased to be.
• Anti-U.S. Violence Erupts in Afghanistan
  By Musadeq Sadeq Associated Press Thursday, May 12, 2005; Page A15 JALALABAD, Afghanistan, May 11 -- Shouting "Death to America!" more than 1,000 demonstrators rioted and threw stones at a U.S. military convoy Wednesday, as protests spread over a report that interrogators desecrated Islam's holy book at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Police fired on the protesters, trying to stifle the biggest display of anti-American anger since the ouster of the radical Taliban militia in 2001. Officials said the violence left four Afghans dead and 71 injured in Jalalabad, a city 80 miles east of the capital, Kabul. There were no reports of U.S. casualties.
• War by other means
  Steve Gowans Tuesday, May 10, 2005
  In late April, 2005 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with members of the Belarus opposition on a trip through Lithuania, to talk about how to elevate "mass pressure for change" (New York Times, April 22, 2005) with a view to ousting the government of Belarus' president Alexander Lukashenko. Washington says Belarus is an outpost of tyranny, along with such other notable US bugbears as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Burma.
• Congress Approves $82 Billion for Wars
  Iraq Cost to Pass $200 Billion; Army to Ask for More
  By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, May 11, 2005; Page A01
  The Senate gave final passage yesterday to an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, sending President Bush a measure that will push the cost of the Iraq invasion well past $200 billion. Even with such large, unanticipated expenditures, Army officials and congressional aides say more money will be needed as early as October.
• Bush offers support to Putin's critics
  US president takes advantage of Victory Day in Moscow to meet advocates of 'civil society' and democracy Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Tuesday May 10, 2005 The Guardian George Bush risked a further deterioration in relations with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday when he met critics of the Kremlin's human rights record and told them he supported their work to build a "civil society" and democracy. The US president held a 35-minute meeting with some of Mr Putin's more vocal critics in his hotel minutes before he attended a Victory Day parade in Red Square at the invitation of Mr Putin
  The comments, confirmed by two others who attended, will widen the growing rift between Moscow and Washington over each other's democratic credentials. The US has accused Russia of reversing its commitment to democracy, while Russia remains furious at growing American influence in the states of the former Soviet Union. Mr Bush's commitment to "export democracy" came to the fore again last night when he flew into the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, to meet Mikhail Saakashvili, its pro-western president.
• US embargo against Cuba scuppers Britons' holidays
  Andrew Clark Tuesday May 10, 2005 The Guardian Hundreds of British travellers have had their Cuban holiday plans destroyed due to a clampdown on business with the government of Fidel Castro by Cendant, the American company that owns British travel agencies such as Ebookers, Octopus and Travelbag. Cendant has spent the last year buying up online travel agencies around the world. But in the last two weeks, it has told all its subsidiaries to cease business immediately with Cuba, on the grounds that it could be liable for prosecution in the United States under the terms of the 44- year-old American trade embargo against the Caribbean republic.
  But the Cuban government condemned the move. The Cuban embassy's press counsellor, René Monzote, said: "This is awful. These people are losing the opportunity to go to Cuba." He said Cuba was becoming increasingly popular, attracting 200,000 British tourists last year to its beaches, resorts, music and salsa culture. "Every time a company here in the UK is bought by an American company, we always have the same problems," said Mr Monzote. Holidaymakers reacted with anger. On one internet forum, a passenger said he had made bookings in April for a trip in July to Cuba costing £533. By the time Ebookers cancelled the reservation, the only tickets available elsewhere cost more than £1,000. Many of the reservations were made after Cendant's £209m purchase of Ebookers, which was completed in January. The Association of British Travel Agents said the takeovers of the travel agencies by Cendant amounted to an unforeseen "force majeure", giving customers little grounds for recourse. [human rights]
• Sinking Globalization
  By Niall Ferguson
  Foreign Affairs March/April 2005 Issue
  Summary: Could globalization collapse? It may seem unlikely today. Yet despite many warnings, people were shocked the last time globalization crumbled, with the onslaught of World War I. Like today, that period was marked by imperial overstretch, great-power rivalry, unstable alliances, rogue regimes, and terrorist organizations. And the world is no better prepared for calamity now.
  As the economic parallels with 1914 suggest, today's globalization shows at least some signs of reversibility. The risks increase when one considers the present political situation, which has the same five flaws as the pre-1914 international order: imperial overstretch, great-power rivalry, an unstable alliance system, rogue regimes sponsoring terror, and the rise of a revolutionary terrorist organization hostile to capitalism.
  The United States--an empire in all but name--is manifestly overstretched. Not only is its current account deficit large and growing larger, but the fiscal deficit that lurks behind it also is set to surge as the baby boomers retire and start to claim Social Security and Medicare benefits.
• Case of Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist
  . By TIM WEINER Published: May 9, 2005 MIAMI, May 5 - From the United States through Latin America and the Caribbean, Luis Posada Carriles has spent 45 years fighting a violent, losing battle to overthrow Fidel Castro. Now he may have nowhere to hide but here.
  .Mr. Posada, a Cuban exile, has long been a symbol for the armed anti-Castro movement in the United States. He remains a prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner that killed 73 people in 1976. He has admitted to plotting attacks that damaged tourist spots in Havana and killed an Italian visitor there in 1997. He was convicted in Panama in a 2000 bomb plot against Mr. Castro. He is no longer welcome in his old Latin America haunts. Mr. Posada, 77, sneaked back into Florida six weeks ago in an effort to seek political asylum for having served as a cold war soldier on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's, his lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said at a news conference last month.
• Washington Loses Control of the O.A.S.
  09 May 2005 With the election on May 2 of Chile's former interior minister Jose Miguel Insulza to the post of secretary general of the Organization of American States (O.A.S.), that alliance will, for the first time since its founding in 1948, have a chief executive who is not the preferred choice of the United States.
• U.S. Tells U.N. It Remains Opposed to Torture, Abuse
  By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A09
  UNITED NATIONS, May 6 -- The Bush administration reaffirmed its commitment to prohibiting torture in a report Friday to the U.N. Committee on Torture, citing the prosecution and punishment of U.S. troops accused of abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But the 95-page report, which focused primarily on police abuses within the United States, avoided any discussion of the CIA's role in transferring secret "ghost detainees" to foreign countries for interrogation. It also sidestepped the question of whether U.S. authorities are obligated to bar the mistreatment of detainees held outside the United States [human rights]
• Galloway strikes back
  Matthew Tempest, political correspondent Friday May 6, 2005 George Galloway tonight took stunning personal revenge against the party that expelled him just over a year ago, defeating Labour's Oona King in east London to become the anti-war Respect party's first and only MP. After coming out on top by 823 votes in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, Mr Galloway launched a verbal attack on the prime minister. "Mr Blair, the people killed and all the lies you have told have come back to haunt you, and the best thing the Labour party can do tomorrow morning is to sack you," he said.
• Blair Wins Re-election, but His Hold Is Weakened
  By ALAN COWELL Published: May 6, 2005 LONDON, Friday, May 6 - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain returned to power on Friday for a record-setting third successive term, according to official election results, with a much reduced majority reflecting his unpopularity over the war in Iraq.
• Blair Wins Historic Third Term
  British Labor Party's Victory Is Diminished by Fallout From War in Iraq By Glenn Frankel Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, May 6, 2005; Page A01 LONDON, May 6 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the Bush administration's closest foreign ally, won a historic third successive term in office but appeared to have a significantly smaller parliamentary majority because of voter anger over his support for the war in Iraq.
• Pentagon Analyst Charged With Disclosing Military Secrets
  By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU Published: May 5, 2005 WASHINGTON, May 4 - Federal agents arrested a Pentagon analyst on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group. Lawrence A. Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, was arrested on Wednesday. The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, turned himself in to the authorities on Wednesday morning in a case that has stirred unusually anxious debate in influential political circles in the capital even though it has focused on a midlevel Pentagon employee. The inquiry has cast a cloud over the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which employed the two men who are said to have received the classified information from Mr. Franklin. The group, also known as Aipac, has close ties to senior policymakers in the Bush administration, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to appear later this month at the group's annual meeting. The investigation has proven awkward as well for a group of conservative Republicans, who held high-level civilian jobs at the Pentagon during President Bush's first term and the buildup toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who were also close to Aipac. They were led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who has been named president of the World Bank. Mr. Franklin once worked in the office of one of Mr. Wolfowitz's allies, Douglas J. Feith
• On Leaving the Superpower Orbit
  Winners and Losers Moving out of the Superpower Orbit By Tom Engelhardt Of the two superpowers that faced each other down in an almost half-century-long Cold War, one -- the United States -- emerged victorious, alone in the world, economically powerful, militarily dominant; the other, never the stronger of the two, limped off, its empire shattered and scattered, its people impoverished and desperate, its military a shell of its former self. This is a story we all know, and more or less accept. Winner/loser, victor/vanquished. It makes sense. That's the way we expect matches, competitions, struggles, wars to end. But what if, as I've suggested recently, the Cold War turned out to be a loser/loser contest? That may seem counterintuitive. In regards to the U.S., it would have been considered laughable not so long ago, except to a few scholars of imperial decline like Immanuel Wallerstein, and yet it may be an increasingly plausible thought.
• With His Star Rising, Mexican Populist Faces New Tests
  By GINGER THOMPSON Published: May 4, 2005 MEXICO CITY, May 3 - He is mayor of the largest city in the hemisphere, and this country's latest political phenomenon. He can summon tens of thousands into the streets at will. In a whirlwind three weeks he staged the biggest protest in Mexico's recent history and turned back a legal challenge from the Mexican president and Congress that threatened to end his political career. Now Andrés Manuel López Obrador is considered the favorite to be elected president next year.
  It is a wave that has swept leftist politicians into power across Latin America. And like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Tabaré Vásquez of Uruguay, Mr. López Obrador personifies the angry disappointment with Washington-backed promarket economic policies that have stabilized the economy for the rich but failed to lift up the poor. His rise to power would move that frustration to the United States' door
• Iraq Backlash in Britain May Affect Future Military Moves
  By ALAN COWELL Published: May 4, 2005 LONDON, May 3 - Election campaigns claim unforeseen casualties, and in Britain's case one may be the ability of British leaders to order troops to war at America's side in quite the same way the United States has come to expect. The campaign for the election here on Thursday has brought a series of damaging disclosures about Prime Minister Tony Blair's actions in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, provoking forecasts that future prime ministers will face greater constraints in sending troops to war.
• Pentagon Says Iraq Effort Limits Ability to Fight Other Conflicts
  By THOM SHANKER Published: May 3, 2005 WASHINGTON, May 2 - The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday. The officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in a classified report that major combat operations elsewhere in the world, should they be necessary, would probably be more protracted and produce higher American and foreign civilian casualties because of the commitment of Pentagon resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Overseas, terrorist sanctuaries have been reduced and the Navy and Air Force have shown they can quickly deploy weapons and personnel to deter adversaries. One example cited by General Myers was the decision to move heavy bombers from bases in the United States to airfields in the Pacific to deter potential hostile action by North Korea when ground forces in the region - those usually assigned to a contingency on the Korean peninsula - began moving toward Iraq in advance of the war there.
  In an upbeat final paragraph, General Myers told Congress that the armed forces "remain the most professional, best trained, and best equipped military in the world. "Our ability to project power, anywhere in the world, remains second to none," he added. "The dedication, commitment, and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces ensure success in every challenge."
• Papers reveal commitment to war
  Secret documents indicate Blair support for military action a year before invasion took place Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour Monday May 2, 2005 The Guardian
  Secret documents revealed yesterday show that, almost a year before the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. The documents show how Mr Blair was told how Britain and the US could "create the conditions" for an invasion, partly, in the words of Jack Straw to "work up" an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein even though in the foreign secretary's own words, "the case was thin".
• Never Shy, Bolton Brings a Zeal to the Table
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: May 1, 2005 WASHINGTON, April 30 - In the tumultuous days before John R. Bolton graduated from Yale University in 1970, he and his roommates leaned mattresses against the windows to keep out stray tear gas shells. The trial of a top Black Panther in New Haven had ignited riots and set off a national uproar. The National Guard patrolled the campus in tanks. A bomb went off at the hockey rink. At commencement, student speakers compared the United States to pre-Nazi Germany and called for an immediate end to the war in Vietnam. But one student sounded a contrarian theme. "The conservative underground is alive and well here," Mr. Bolton told his classmates and their parents, scorning a handful of hecklers. "If we do not make our influence felt, rest assured we will in the real world."
• British military chief reveals new legal fears over Iraq war
  Antony Barnett and Martin Bright Sunday May 1, 2005 The Observer
  The man who led Britain's armed forces into Iraq has said that Tony Blair and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, will join British soldiers in the dock if the military are ever prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq. In a remarkably frank interview that goes to the heart of the political row over the Attorney General's legal advice, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said he did not have full legal cover from prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC). 'If my soldiers went to jail and I did, some other people would go with me,' said Boyce. In his most detailed explanation yet of why he demanded an unequivocal assurance from lawyers that the war was legal, he said: 'I wanted to make sure that we had this anchor which has been signed by the government law officer ... 'It may not stop us from being charged, but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought into the frame as well.' Pressed by The Observer on whether he meant the Prime Minister and the Attorney General, Boyce replied: 'Too bloody right.'
• Power Grid In Iraq Far From Fixed
  New Government Inherits Huge Task By Caryle Murphy and Bassam SebtiWashington Post Foreign Service Sunday, May 1, 2005; Page A01 BAGHDAD -- When his lights and television go dark, as they regularly do, Khalid Qasim Ali flips a switch in his living room to bring back the power. This electricity is not state-supplied. Instead, it comes from a generator three blocks away that is connected to Ali's home by a wire strung in the air. All told, 107 families in Baghdad's working-class neighborhood of Topchi are hooked up to the generator. The arrangement gives them power during the long blackouts that are routine in Iraq.
  Nothing has done more to puncture Iraqis' once-widespread belief in Americans' technological superiority and power than their inability to quickly revive the power system, vital for Iraq's oil industry. And perhaps nothing has frustrated U.S. reconstruction officials more than that failure.
• Riding the Dragon, Soaring on Eagles
  By Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.) FPIF Policy Report April 2005
  But this U.S. empire, built on enthralling debtor nations, may itself be in danger from economic overextension
  * Between January 2001 and July 2004, the portion of the U.S. debt privately held by foreigners rose from 30% to 42%. * Between September 2003 and September 2004, foreigners increased their holdings by $400 billion, from $1.46 trillion to $1.86 trillion-financing virtually the entire $422 billion budget deficit for fiscal year 2004. * U.S. Treasury Department statistics through July 2004 reveal that five of the seven top foreign holders of U.S. obligations are Asian, with Japan ($696 billion) and China ($167 billion) in first and second place, respectively. (The other three in Asia, ranked five, six, and seven, are South Korea at $62 billion, Taiwan at $58 billion, and Hong Kong at $50 billion.)

• A Private Obsession
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 29, 2005 American health care is unique among advanced countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector. It's also uniquely inefficient. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country, yet many Americans lack health insurance and don't receive essential care. This week yet another report emphasized just how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record, more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance. And lack of insurance leads to inadequate medical attention. Over a 12-month period, 41 percent of the uninsured were unable to see a doctor when needed because of cost; 56 percent had no personal doctor or health care provider.
• Detainee Questioning Was Faked, Book Says
  U.S. Military Denies Staging Interviews By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A21
  The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday. Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night. "They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors. Saar worked as a translator at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003. During that time, several members of Congress reported visiting the base, but military officials said they do not know precisely how many toured it. Saar also told CBS, and claims in his upcoming book, "Inside the Wire," that a few dozen of the more than 750 men who have been held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay were terrorists, and that little valuable information has been obtained from them.
• Pursuer of Mexican Leader's Opponent Quits Under Fire
  By GINGER THOMPSON Published: April 28, 2005 ILLAHERMOSA, Mexico, April 27 - The legal proceedings that threatened to knock Mexico's most popular politician off next year's presidential ballot and to plunge this country into turmoil seemed to come to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when a beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of his attorney general and a review of the government's case against the politician.
  The announcement comes only a few days after nearly one million people thronged the streets of the capital to protest the Fox government's campaign to prosecute Mr. López Obrador. The case against the mayor was based on a minor contempt of court charge for disobeying an order against the construction of a hospital access road. Still, it threatened the mayor's political career, and could have landed him, the leading contender to succeed Mr. Fox, in jail [Media]
• Italy Opens Its Own Probe of Agent's Slaying in Iraq
  By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, April 28, 2005; Page A17 ROME, April 27 -- Dissatisfied with the results of a joint investigation with the United States, Italy on Wednesday began its own probe into the March 4 killing of one of its intelligence agents by U.S. troops in Baghdad. Italian officials said Rome prosecutors were looking for evidence of homicide in the case of Nicola Calipari, who was transporting a rescued Italian hostage to the Baghdad airport when U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car. The bullet- scarred Toyota Corolla was brought to Rome on Tuesday
• U.S. Figures Show Sharp Global Rise In Terrorism
  State Dept. Will Not Put Data in Report By Susan B. Glasser Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01 The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week. Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides who were briefed on statistics covering incidents including the bloody school seizure in Russia and violence related to the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.
  Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total -- a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration's assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer
• The ricin ring that never was
  Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London Duncan Campbell 04/14/05 "The Guardian" - - Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring. [misinformation]
• Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms
  By Dana PriestWashington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A01 U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.
• Foreign Policy Disputes Are Subtext in Battle Over Bolton
  By Glenn Kessler and Robin WrightWashington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A06 In public, the controversy over John R. Bolton's nomination as United Nations ambassador has focused on his handling of personnel issues and his managerial skills. But the first big battle of President Bush's second term also reflects long-standing tensions among Republicans over the thrust of U.S. foreign policy.
• Passing the Buck
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 22, 2005
  The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant- mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it? An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.
• Private Security Workers Living On Edge in Iraq
  Downing of Helicopter Shows Heightened Risks By Ann Scott TysonWashington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A01
  BAGHDAD -- Cruising toward Baghdad in the belly of a Spanish turboprop plane with a dozen other private security contractors from Blackwater USA, Rich, a 43-year-old former Navy commando, squinted out the window at the Euphrates River. The Casa 212 dove 12,000 feet toward Baghdad airport in a drunken, corkscrew landing. A short while later, Rich was riding shotgun in the back of one of Blackwater's South African-made armored Mamba vehicles along the main highway to the capital, one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq.
  Freeman, of Portsmouth, Va., said he joined Blackwater after seeing some Marines on television during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. "I'd been missing it for a while," he recalled. "I said 'Man, I really need to get back into this.' " But with average pay of $500 to $600 a day, he said, the money was also a big draw for him and his buddies. He said he planned to work for Blackwater for three years to save up cash for retirement -- and a sailboat. "Most of us have a plan -- it's like, make hay while the sun shines," he said. Freeman blasted the Mamba's air-horn to force several Iraqi vehicles off the highway. "We beep the horn and flash the lights or push them off the shoulder to keep a buffer between us. Our main threat is the car bomb," he said, adding, "We've had cars cross three lanes of traffic to come after [Arrogance]
• Bush backs his man for UN job as support wavers
  Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Friday April 22, 2005 The Guardian
  President George Bush yesterday weighed in publicly for the first time to try to swing Republicans behind his controversial choice of US ambassador to the United Nations. In a week of unusual division among Republicans, Mr Bush's efforts appeared aimed as much at his own party as at Democratic senators, who have fought strenuously to try to derail the candidacy of hardliner John Bolton
  New revelations surfaced yesterday from the former US ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, who described "undiplomatic behaviour" by Mr Bolton during a 2003 visit to Seoul. Mr Hubbard, a Bush administration appointee, told Newsweek magazine that he had contacted Senate investigators to correct Mr Bolton's testimony about a speech in which he described life in North Korea as a "hellish nightmare". Last week, Mr Bolton told the Senate the ambassador had praised the speech. In fact, Mr Hubbard told Newsweek he had advised Mr Bolton to tone it down. The Senate foreign relations committee has also asked to interview the former deputy CIA director, John McLaughlin, to confirm whether Mr Bolton had visited agency headquarters to demand the sacking of an intelligence analyst who did not support his hardline views.
• Passenger Lists Sought For Flights Over U.S.
  By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 21, 2005; Page A01
  The U.S. government plans to force foreign airlines flying over American soil to turn over the names of passengers on board or check the names against U.S. government watch lists in an effort to prevent terrorists from entering U.S. airspace. Under current rules, overseas carriers are required to provide passenger manifests to U.S. officials within 15 minutes of takeoff if they are to land in the United States, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Officials have been concerned that terrorists may try to hijack a plane over the United States and crash it into a building, as occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. Officials acknowledge, however, that no credible intelligence exists indicating such a plot.
  The proposal has angered European, Mexican and Canadian airlines, which operate most of the 500 estimated daily overflights. If foreign airlines do not comply with the order, which is expected to be issued in coming weeks, they could have to reroute flights, adding time and cost to the journeys. At least one carrier, Aeromexico, claims the rule would violate international aviation agreements.
• Senate Panel Postpones Vote on U.N. Nominee
  By DOUGLAS JEHL Published: April 20, 2005 WASHINGTON, April 19 - A surprise last-minute defection by an Ohio Republican forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone a vote that had been scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. The chairman of the panel, Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, reluctantly agreed to put off any vote until next month to allow a review of what Democrats portrayed as troubling new accusations that cast doubt on Mr. Bolton's temperament and credibility. Until the defection, by Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, the panel had appeared prepared to send the nomination to the Senate floor on a strict party-line vote. But Mr. Voinovich stunned other senators by announcing that more time was needed to explore accusations against Mr. Bolton. "My conscience got me," he said after the stormy two-hour session
• Delay Is Sought in Vote on U.N. Nominee
  By DOUGLAS JEHL and STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: April 19, 2005
  WASHINGTON, April 18 - The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will ask the panel's Republican majority to delay a vote scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, according to Democratic Senate officials.
  The Democrat, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, will urge Republicans to allow the panel more time to review allegations that Mr. Bolton has acted abusively toward subordinates and others, the Democratic officials said.
  On Monday, one of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's top aides spoke out in opposition to Mr. Bolton. "Under Secretary Bolton was never the formidable power that people are insinuating he was in terms of foreign policy, or blocking the policies that Secretary Powell wished to pursue," Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Mr. Powell's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview. "But do I think John Bolton would make a good ambassador to the United Nations? Absolutely not," Mr. Wilkerson said. "He is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador." Mr. Wilkerson said he had conveyed his views to senators and staff members on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Neither Mr. Powell nor Richard L. Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state under Mr. Powell, have commented publicly about Mr. Bolton's nomination. Their offices have not replied to repeated inquiries. Mr. Powell was not among a group of five Republican former secretaries of state who sent the committee a letter that endorsed Mr. Bolton's nomination.
• The Grim Reaper, Riding a Firetruck in Iraq
  Marines Recount Dramatic Assault At Base Near Syria By Steve FainaruWashington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, April 19, 2005; Page A01 HUSAYBAH, Iraq -- Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Butler shook himself from the rubble of a suicide truck bombing. He staggered to the ledge of his three-story guard tower and stared into a cloud of white smoke.
  The attack "demonstrates an extremely mature and capable insurgency," said Maj. John Reed, executive officer for the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, which commands U.S. troops here. "It showed its ability to mass a very complex attack very quickly."
• Bolton's Tough Style, Record Face Scrutiny
  Hearings Begin Today For U.N. Nominee By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 11, 2005; Page A01
  During a meeting on North Korea in late 2001, John R. Bolton's repeated talk of overthrowing Kim Jong Il frustrated the State Department's specialist on the country. "Regime change" is not President Bush's declared objective in North Korea, Charles L. Pritchard recalled telling Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. "That is exactly what we are all about," Bolton snapped back, curtly reminding Pritchard and a colleague that U.S. troops had just finished overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pritchard said. [Regime change]

• Two Years Later, Iraq War Drains Military
  Heavy Demands Offset Combat Experience By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 19, 2005; Page A01
  Two years after the United States launched a war in Iraq with a crushing display of power, a guerrilla conflict is grinding away at the resources of the U.S. military and casting uncertainty over the fitness of the all-volunteer force, according to senior military leaders, lawmakers and defense experts.
  The unexpectedly heavy demands of sustained ground combat are depleting military manpower and gear faster than they can be fully replenished. Shortfalls in recruiting and backlogs in needed equipment are taking a toll, and growing numbers of units have been broken apart or taxed by repeated deployments, particularly in the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve. [US Military]
• Bush nominates Wolfowitz for World Bank
  Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Thursday March 17, 2005 The Guardian
  President George Bush yesterday chose one of the most controversial figures in his administration, the Pentagon's chief ideological proponent of the Iraq war Paul Wolfowitz, to head the World Bank. The selection of Mr Wolfowitz, who as deputy defence secretary was a prime mover of the president's decision to go to war, was greeted with incredulity in Europe and the development community, and by Democrats in Washington. "It's a very surprising and in many ways an inappropriate nomination," said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist and economic adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.
• Wolfowitz Picked for World Bank
  Bush Nominee for Chief Faces Opposition Overseas By Paul Blustein and Peter Baker Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page A01 President Bush said yesterday that he has chosen Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, as the U.S. nominee to head the World Bank. The announcement was an aggressive move to put the administration's stamp on the World Bank, the largest source of aid to developing countries, by installing at the bank's helm a leading advocate of the U.S. campaign to spur democracy in the Middle East. But it risked a new rift with countries critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, especially since it came so soon after Bush's nomination of John R. Bolton, another prominent hawk, as ambassador to the United Nations.
  The nomination shocked many among the bank's 10,000-member staff and in many capitals abroad, especially in Europe. When Wolfowitz's name surfaced a couple of weeks ago as a possible nominee, many diplomats and bank insiders dismissed his prospects as remote. Although the United States traditionally gets to choose the World Bank chief, there was speculation that a Wolfowitz candidacy could be torpedoed by the board of the bank, a 184-nation institution that has always operated by consensus.
• Nomination Shocks, Worries Europeans
  Some Say Selection of War Proponent Could Undercut Improved U.S. Relations By Keith B. Richburg and Glenn Frankel Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page A07 PARIS, March 16 -- President Bush's nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as the next president of the World Bank was met with much surprise, little enthusiasm and some outright opposition in Europe, where he is best known as a leading proponent of a conflict deeply unpopular here, the Iraq war. "We were led to believe that the neoconservatives were losing ground," said Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. "But clearly the revolution is alive and well."
• Exposing 'Delusions'
  By Martin Walker UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
  John R. Bolton, the nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, laid out his opinions on the world body in "Delusions of Grandeur," which was published by the Cato Institute in 1997 and contains a classic Bolton essay titled "The Creation, Fall, Rise and Fall of the United Nations."
• The party's over
  Why are the Conservatives given little hope of winning the looming election? They have never recovered from the fall of Margaret Thatcher and have lurched from leader to leader ever since, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Norman Tebbit explains how she transformed the Tories Monday March 14, 2005 The Guardian
  In October 1963, Harold Macmillan resigned abruptly and was replaced by "the 14th Earl of Home", in Harold Wilson's derisive phrase. The succession was carried out by underhand means, and prompted the resignation of two ministers, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell. Three months later, Macleod wrote one of the most devastating now-it-can be-told political articles ever published, describing the sheer misrepresentation of parliamentary opinion which had been used to job in Home, and denouncing a "magic circle" of Old Etonians who had arranged this. Nothing was ever quite the same again
• Illegal drug trade hits new high as users total 200m
  Runaway demand around the globe puts more money into the hands of traffickers despite action to curb supply Jason Burke Sunday March 13, 2005 The Observer The global drug trade is booming, fuelled by the demand from more than 200 million people worldwide who used illegal narcotics last year, new reports show. According to an as-yet-unpublished UN report, despite multi-billion-pound anti-drug measures that have restricted some supplies, the market is as insatiable as ever.
  However, all drugs experts agree that the massive opium harvests in Afghanistan dominate the landscape. The UNODC hopes that the sheer size of last year's crop - 4,200 tonnes - will mean less being planted in coming years, as a glut brings down prices.
• Europeans Investigate CIA Role in Abductions
  Suspects Possibly Taken To Nations That Torture By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, March 13, 2005; Page A01
  MILAN -- A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van. He hasn't been seen since. Milan investigators, however, now appear to be close to identifying his kidnappers. Last month, officials showed up at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy and demanded records of any American planes that had flown into or out of the joint U.S.-Italian military installation around the time of the abduction. They also asked for logs of vehicles that had entered the base.
  This Gulfstream jet was ordered by a firm that appeared to be a front company for the CIA, according to records. (Special To The Washington Post) Three official investigations have been initiated into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. ITALY February 2003 A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was kidnapped in Milan, officials say. Italian investigators are pursuing the theory that covert agents -- possibly from the United States, Italy or Egypt -- were behind the abduction. GERMANY December 2003 A 41-year-old resident of Ulm, Germany, Khaled Masri, was detained during a vacation at the Macedonian border. He claims that he was flown to Kabul in January 2004, where he was held as a suspected terrorist, and that his captors spoke English with an American accent. SWEDEN December 2001 A parliamentary investigation has found that CIA agents wearing hoods orchestrated the seizure of two Egyptian nationals who were flown on a U.S.-registered airplane to Cairo. The men claim they were tortured in prison there. Italian authorities suspect the Egyptian was the target of a CIA-sponsored operation known as rendition, in which terrorism suspects are forcibly taken for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced. [Abductees] [Torture] [Outsourcing]
• Talk in Japan Shakes Dollar and Treasuries
  By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER Published: March 11, 2005
  The dollar fell and Treasury yields rose yesterday after the Japanese prime minister made remarks that suggested the country's central bank could be shifting some of its huge reserves out of dollars and Treasury securities. Japan's Ministry of Finance quickly denied there was any change, a statement that limited the fall of the dollar and bolstered Treasury prices. But the volatile reactions in the markets underscore that the dollar, already under pressure from the drag of the United States' record current-account deficit, has another issue that could weigh on it in the future
• U.S. Quits Pact Used in Capital Cases
  Foes of Death Penalty Cite Access to Envoys
  By Charles Lane Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 10, 2005; Page A01 The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday. In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969. [human rights]
• 500,000 mass for Hizbullah in Beirut
  Shia poor throw their weight behind status quo Brian Whitaker in Beirut Wednesday March 9, 2005 The Guardian Syria's supporters in Lebanon struck back against the "cedar revolution" yesterday with a show of strength which easily dwarfed anything their opponents have been able muster. They drove into Beirut throughout the morning in cars waving Lebanese flags and battered buses decorated with pictures of the Syrian-backed president, Emile Lahoud.
• Bush Nominates Weapons Expert as Envoy to U.N.
  By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: March 8, 2005 WASHINGTON, March 7 - President Bush on Monday chose John R. Bolton, a blunt-spoken conservative known for his sharp skepticism of the United Nations and international diplomacy, as the new American ambassador to the world organization. Administration officials said his appointment would strengthen efforts to hold the United Nations to effective standards. But the nomination brought expressions of concern from many diplomats speaking on the condition that they not be identified by name or country, many of whom noted that Mr. Bolton had been scathing in his criticism of the United Nations.
• Critic of U.N. Named Envoy Bush's Choice of Bolton Is a Surprise; Democrats Plan to Contest Nomination
  By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, March 8, 2005; Page A01
  President Bush named Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton yesterday as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a surprise choice that would send an outspoken critic of the world body's effectiveness to its inner councils. Bolton's government experience stretches through three Republican administrations, and his tough language and willingness to eschew diplomatic niceties have earned him both fans and critics overseas and in the bureaucracy. In Bush's first term, he proved to be highly effective at advancing his strong conservative views within the administration, even when he was at odds with then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and much of the State Department.
  The post requires Senate confirmation, and Democrats immediately signaled they would wage a spirited confirmation battle. Forty-three Democrats voted against his nomination as undersecretary for arms control four years ago; even some Republicans privately expressed dismay at Bolton's elevation yesterday.
• Tough Love or Tough Luck?
  By Susan E. Rice Tuesday, March 8, 2005; Page A15
  President Bush has shocked even his most cynical critics by nominating the combative neoconservative John Bolton to one of our most complex and sensitive diplomatic posts: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton served the past four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, though then-Secretary of State Colin Powell initially resisted his appointment. Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, who passed over Bolton for deputy secretary despite strong support for him from Vice President Cheney, put on a brave face yesterday in announcing his appointment to the United Nations
• Italian hostage accuses US of trying to kill her as thousands mourn her rescuer
  John Hooper in Rome Monday March 7, 2005 The Guardian
  The former Italian hostage who saw her rescuer shot dead at a US checkpoint in Baghdad said yesterday they might have been targeted because of US objections to Italy's policy of negotiating with kidnappers. Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for the far-left daily Il Manifesto, was wounded as bullets ripped into the car taking her to Baghdad airport to be flown out of Iraq. In a vivid account, written for her newspaper, she described how Nicola Calipari, the international operations chief of Italy's military intelligence service, was shot in the head as he tried to shield her. "I heard his last breath as he died on top of me," she wrote. Amid a growing sense of anger, disbelief and sorrow in Italy, about 10,000 people filed through Rome's Victor Emmanuel monument yesterday to pay respects to Mr Calipari, whose body lay in state. He will receive a state funeral today.
• Outrage as US soldiers kill hostage rescue hero
  Bush promises Italian leader a full investigation Philip Willan Rome Sunday March 6, 2005 The Observer The Italian journalist kidnapped in Iraq arrived back in Rome yesterday as fury and confusion grew over the circumstances in which she was shot and one of her rescuers was killed by American soldiers.
  Berlusconi, a staunch ally of the US who defied widespread public opposition to the Iraq war and sent 3,000 troops, took the rare step of summoning US ambassador Mel Sembler to his office.
• Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails
  By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON Published: March 6, 2005 ASHINGTON, March 5 - The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.
  The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said. The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against torture. [Outsourcing]
• U.S. Adopts Preemptive Counterintelligence Strategy
  By David Morgan Reuters Sunday, March 6, 2005; Page A07 COLLEGE STATION, Tex., March 5 -- The Bush administration has adopted a new counterintelligence strategy that calls for preemptive action against foreign intelligence services viewed as threats to national security, officials said Saturday. The first national U.S. counterintelligence strategy, which President Bush approved on Tuesday, aims to combat intelligence services from countries hungry for U.S. military and nuclear secrets, such as China and Iran, both at home and abroad, counterintelligence officials said. The strategy marks a departure from a longstanding counterintelligence practice of waiting for foreign-sponsored agents to act against intelligence and law enforcement agencies before responding. "Instead of being willing to take a punch and be damaged, we in fact take the skills of counterintelligence and . . . impose damage on other intelligence services," Quattrocki, a top aide to Van Cleave, said. He declined to identify countries seen as potential targets. But other officials cited China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Libya as nations that have tried to collect U.S. secrets through spy techniques, including cyber espionage.
• US troops kill rescuer as Italian hostage is plucked to safety in Iraq
  Rory Carroll in Baghdad, John Hooper in Rome and Sam Jones Saturday March 5, 2005 The Guardian American soldiers in Iraq opened fire on a car carrying an Italian journalist who had just been freed by kidnappers last night, injuring the woman and killing an Italian secret service agent who tried to protect her.
• Kissinger, Mahathir Clash at Leadership Conference
  By Mike Weisbart Korea Times Columnist Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state in the Nixon Administration, and outspoken former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad were engaged in a heated debate in a Seoul conference Thursday. At a blue ribbon panel of world leaders, titled the 2005 Asian Leadership Conference organized by the Chosun Ilbo Thursday at COEX in Seoul, Mahathir railed against the rich and powerful countries of the world and their control over the fates of poor countries. ``They rule the world, but the world has no say in their elections,'' he complained caustically during his opening remarks. Kissinger, in reply, pointed out that globalization is not the result of ``some master plan'' and took issue with Mahathir's characterization of the plight of poor countries. ``International problems cannot be categorized as weak versus strong,'' he argued.
• American Jails in Iraq Bursting With Detainees
  By EDWARD WONG Published: March 4, 2005 BU GHRAIB, Iraq, March 2 - The American military's major detention centers in Iraq have swelled to capacity and are holding more people than ever, senior military officials say. The growing detainee population reflects recent changes in how the military has been waging the war and in its policies toward detainees, the officials say. The military swept up many Iraqis before the Jan. 30 elections in an attempt to curb violence and halted all releases before the vote. Other detainees have been captured in ambitious recent offensives across the Sunni Triangle, from Samarra to Falluja to the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad. The Abu Ghraib abuse scandal also forced changes in the system, with the military working quickly last summer to try and weed out detainees who obviously did not belong in prison. Many of the ones remaining are more likely to be denied release by review boards, military officials say. As of this week, the military is holding at least 8,900 detainees in the three major prisons, 1,000 more than in late January.
• China, Others Criticize U.S. Report on Rights
  Double Standard at State Dept. Alleged By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A14 BEIJING, March 3 -- China accused the United States on Thursday of using a double standard to judge human rights in other countries, adding to a list of nations suggesting that the government that produced the Abu Ghraib prison abuses has no business commenting on what happens elsewhere. "No country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process or view itself as the incarnation of human rights that can reign over other countries and give orders to the others," Premier Wen Jiabao's cabinet declared, three days after the State Department criticized China in its annual human rights report.
• Mr Howard's Australia
  Fred Halliday 3 - 3 - 2005 Fred Halliday, in Canberra, finds a troubled heart inside the lucky country.
  This domestic shift has coincided with a change in attitudes to the outside world. The emergence of militant Islamism in Indonesia (evidenced in the 2002 bombing in Bali, a favourite Australian holiday destination), of insurrection in southern Thailand, and of militant religious and nationalist trends in Malaysia combine to lessen the wish to integrate with east Asia. Symptomatically, interest in Asian languages and Indonesian studies has declined dramatically in Australian universities. Yet Australia is only too aware of the rise of China, which has replaced Japan as the primary Asian strategic foe - not least as Howard has been treated as a marginal figure in recent Asian summit meetings. This is one issue on which Canberra does not follow the American line: Alexander Downer declared on a visit to China in August 2004 that, in the event of a conflict with Taiwan, Australia would not be drawn in.
  By contrast, its 4-million strong neighbour to the southeast, New Zealand, exudes no such vulnerability - because it is even further away. The first country in the world to give women the vote, with its exceptionally open interaction between its pakeha (white) and indigenous Maori populations, with its social and political traditions of Scandinavian liberality, has been able in its foreign and defence policies consistently to challenge the United States.
  Canberra and Wellington, John Howard and Helen Clark, in short, are more than a two-and-a-half hour flight apart. Howard has little time for New Zealand's socialist and liberal values; like Rupert Murdoch, he promotes what is, in effect, the Americanisation of Australia's public life. The sun may well be shining this summer, but the "lucky country" is not quite as content as it would like to appear.
• Commentary: The buck, one day, may stop at Asian central banks
  By William Pesek Jr. Bloomberg News Thursday, March 3, 2005 Asian countries are rolling the dice with an enterprise that may alter the complexion of the global financial system, affecting powerful central banks on the other side of the world. . It's called the "Asian Bellagio Group," a name that is borrowed from the European Bellagio Group, a gathering of academics started in the 1960s. The Asian group includes officials from Japan, China, South Korea and Southeast Asian nations who met in Bangkok last week to discuss the U.S. dollar's slide. . The group is a formidable crowd, considering that it holds well in excess of $1.1 trillion of U.S. Treasuries. In fact, if the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, is wondering why his recent rate increases are not working out as planned, he need only look to the East. .
• Protest against spies and spy bases
  Wellington, easter 2005 Saturday march 26, sunday 27
• The U.S. and Europe: Quasi-Allies
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 156, March 1, 2005
• Still an enigma, our Petrograd correspondent
  Who did Arthur Ransome work for during Russian Revolution: The Manchester Guardian, MI6, or the Bolsheviks? Files only add to confusion David Pallister Tuesday March 1, 2005 The Guardian The debate about the true political affiliations of the children's writer and journalist Arthur Ransome has been going on for nearly a century. Was he, when reporting the Russian revolution and its aftermath - latterly for the Manchester Guardian - a committed Bolshevik or a romantic ingenu caught up by the momentous events? Or was he a British agent getting valuable information from his Kremlin contacts? Or, perhaps, a double agent?

• A Plot Thickens
  Three Decades After Chile's Right-Wing Coup, Historians Have Yet to Dot All the i's. But One Thinks He May Have Crossed a K. By Lynne Duke Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page D01
  Maxwell, 64, had been a senior fellow at the council for 15 years. For 11 years, he also reviewed books for Foreign Affairs, the prestigious council journal. And now he would accuse both entities of suppressing debate and silencing his voice because of pressure from Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser, secretary of state and global power broker. Maxwell's writings indeed upset Kissinger, say Kissinger's associates. Maxwell had revisited a bitter debate, still red-hot after three decades, about Chile and Kissinger and the depth of U.S. involvement in the fall of one regime and the rise of another.
• Last word on the revolution
  For 14 years, until his death in July, the writer and political campaigner Paul Foot worked on one final book - about the struggle for the vote and the meaning of democracy. As this, the first of two exclusive extracts, shows, he remained a passionate activist until the very end
  Monday February 21, 2005 The Guardian
  I have been surprised by the number of times I have been urged to "go into politics". When I protested that I was already in politics, I was told that what was meant was "real politics", meaning parliament. Then and since, I took the view that the main job of socialists must be outside parliament, making the case for socialism and for socialist organisation where it matters most, in the rank and file. On the few occasions I have stood for elected office, I did so chiefly for propaganda reasons, and was suitably and comprehensively rebuffed. All my adult life has been spent as an active member of a revolutionary socialist party, the International Socialists, later the Socialist Workers party. I have experienced as widely as anyone else in the past 40 years the many obstacles against which such a party has constantly to struggle. The menace of sectarianism - the biblical assertion that our sect is right and all the others wrong - haunts anyone who has ever taken part in such activity. With it goes dogmatism, doctrinaire assertiveness, stale and meaningless language, constant repetition of allegedly incontrovertible texts, all of which leads not to leadership of the masses but to isolation from them. I have had my fill of all these horrors, but none of them is half as destructive as abstinence or apathy. The socialist who joins nothing and links with nobody is the most useless of all.
• More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery
  By SAM ROBERTS Published: February 21, 2005
  For the first time, more blacks are coming to the United States from Africa than during the slave trade. Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.
• The mole, the US media and a White House coup
  The reporter who wasn't is part of a wider press scandal, writes Paul Harris in New York Sunday February 20, 2005 The Observer
  For two years Jeff Gannon cut an unobtrusive figure at White House press conferences. The shaven-headed, craggily handsome man worked for an obscure news agency called Talon News, known for its conservative sympathies. He was often the subject of jokes by colleagues on weightier news organisations. No one is laughing now, because Gannon was far from being a harmless distraction. He was writing under a false name and working for a Republican front organisation. Suddenly, his 'softball' questions to White House officials looked less like eccentricities and more like plotting by an administration which has frequently displayed a dark mastery of the arts of press control.
• Veteran of dirty wars wins lead US spy role
  Written off by many after his role in Central America, John Negroponte's revived career hits a new high Duncan Campbell Friday February 18, 2005 The Guardian
  John Negroponte's nomination by President Bush yesterday to be his chief of intelligence represents the pinnacle of rehabilitation for a man who, for many people, will always be associated with US involvement in the "dirty wars" in Central America in the 1980s.
• American Defeat in Iraq
  by Tanaka Sakai Japan Focus 17 February 2005
  The U.S. occupation of Iraq has become ever more chaotic. Last November, U.S. forces insisted that Fallujah, a Sunni town in central Iraq, was the hub of Iraq's guerrilla organisations, and launched an all-out attack. The Bush administration had been insisting that if U.S. troops wiped out the guerrillas there, resistance in other regions would easily be brought under control, and this would allow the general elections, planned for January 30th, to proceed smoothly. Japanese foreign affairs specialists also predicted that 'if the U.S. forces bring Fallujah under control, Iraq will become stable.'
• Iran and Syria confront US with defence pact
  Ewen MacAskill in Beirut and Duncan Campbell Thursday February 17, 2005 The Guardian Iran and Syria heightened tension across the Middle East and directly confronted the Bush administration yesterday by declaring they had formed a mutual self-defence pact to confront the "threats" now facing them. The move, which took the Foreign Office by surprise, was announced after a meeting in Tehran between the Iranian vice-president, Mohammed Reza Aref, and the Syrian prime minister, Naji al-Otari. "At this sensitive point, the two countries require a united front due to numerous challenges," said Mr Otari.
• Getting the Purple Finger
  Naomi Klein he Iraqi people gave America the biggest 'thank you' in the best way we could have hoped for." Reading this election analysis from Betsy Hart, a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, I found myself thinking about my late grandmother. Half blind and a menace behind the wheel of her Chevrolet, she adamantly refused to surrender her car keys. She was convinced that everywhere she drove (flattening the house pets of Philadelphia along the way) people were waving and smiling at her. "They are so friendly!" We had to break the bad news. "They aren't waving with their whole hand, Grandma--just with their middle finger." So it is with Betsy Hart and the other near-sighted election observers: They think the Iraqi people have finally sent America those long-awaited flowers and candies, when Iraq's voters just gave them the (purple) finger.
  Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again, while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly. Now it seems that two years of bloodshed, bribery and backroom arm-twisting were leading up to this: a deal in which the ayatollahs get control over the family, Texaco gets the oil, and Washington gets its enduring military bases (call it the "oil for women program"). Everyone wins except the voters, who risked their lives to cast their ballots for a very different set of policies.
• Libel law review over McDonald's ruling
  Clare Dyer, legal correspondent Wednesday February 16, 2005 The Guardian The government is to review the libel laws after two penniless environmental campaigners who were sued by McDonald's, the global burger chain, yesterday won a ruling at the European court of human rights that their rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression were violated when they were denied legal aid.
• Army Plans To Keep Iraq Troop Level Through '06
  Year-Long Active-Duty Stints Likely to Continue By Bradley GrahamWashington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A01 The U.S. Army expects to keep its troop strength in Iraq at the current level of about 120,000 for at least two more years, according to the Army's top operations officer. While allowing for the possibility that the levels could decrease or increase depending on security conditions and other factors, Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace Jr. told reporters yesterday that the assumption of little change through 2006 represents "the most probable case."
• Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
  New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory By Barton GellmanWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01 The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
• Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision
  By Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A01
  When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions. But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.
• A Former Exile Sees His Hopes Revive in Iraq
  By DEXTER FILKINS
  Published: February 13, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 12 - Nine months ago, American soldiers pulled up to Ahmad Chalabi's compound here to help raid and ransack the place, marking a dramatic break between the Bush administration and the Iraqi exile who, more than anyone else outside the American government, helped make the case for the invasion of Iraq.
  Earlier this week, as dusk settled on the capital, a line of Humvees and American trucks returned, this time bearing one of the American Embassy's most important diplomats, Robert Ford. The purpose of Mr. Ford's visit was to assess what the next Iraqi government, perhaps with Mr. Chalabi in a senior post, was planning for the future.
  Vilified in the United States as the man who fed exaggerated reports of Saddam's weaponry to intelligence agencies, and often listed as one of the most unpopular people in Iraq, Mr. Chalabi is now all but assured a seat in the National Assembly. Over the past several days he has begun maneuvering to become the country's prime minister.
• U.S. Uses Drones to Probe Iran For Arms
  Surveillance Flights Are Sent From Iraq By Dafna LinzerWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A01 The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort. The small, pilotless planes, penetrating Iranian airspace from U.S. military facilities in Iraq, use radar, video, still photography and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity to gather information that is not accessible by satellites, the officials said. The aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation.
• Lawyer Is Guilty of Aiding Terror
  Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Lynne F. Stewart, accompanied by her husband, Ralph Poynter, after her conviction on terrorism charges on Thursday.
  By JULIA PRESTON Published: February 11, 2005 Lynne F. Stewart, an outspoken lawyer known for representing a long list of unpopular defendants, was convicted yesterday by a federal jury in Manhattan of aiding Islamic terrorism by smuggling messages out of jail from a terrorist client. In a startlingly sweeping verdict, Ms. Stewart was convicted on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of lying to the government when she pledged to obey federal rules that barred her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, from communicating with his followers. Her co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Mohamed Yousry, were also convicted of all the charges against them. The verdict was a major victory for Justice Department prosecutors in one of the country's most important terror cases since the Sept. 11 attacks. Ms. Stewart's April 2002 indictment was announced in Washington by John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and the verdict was hailed yesterday by his successor, Alberto R. Gonzales.
  Afterward, Ms. Stewart said she was stunned and vowed to appeal the verdict. She called the trial a government assault on the practice of law. "I see myself as being a symbol of what people rail against when they say our civil liberties are eroded," she said to a small cluster of her supporters outside the federal district courthouse. "I hope this will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country, that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do their jobs." "I will fight on, I'm not giving up," she promised defiantly. "I know I committed no crime. I know what I did was right." But then her voice wavered and tears came to her eyes. Ms. Stewart, who is 65, faces up to 30 years in jail. [human rights]
• Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity
  By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, February 11, 2005; Page A01 NEW YORK, Feb. 10 -- Radical lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted Thursday of smuggling messages from her jailed client -- a blind Muslim cleric convicted of terrorism -- to his Islamic fundamentalist followers in Egypt, actions that a jury found amounted to material support for terrorism. The jury deliberated for 13 days in Manhattan federal court before delivering guilty verdicts against Stewart and two men. U.S. postal worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar was convicted of conspiracy for "plotting to kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country" by publishing a paper urging the killing of Jews. The third defendant, Arabic interpreter Mohammed Yousry, was found guilty of providing material support to terrorism. [human rights]
• Pentagon Boosts Plan For Anthrax Inoculations
  Emergency Provisions Invoked to Revive Use By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page A03 The Pentagon has taken a major step toward reviving its controversial program of giving anthrax vaccine to service members, invoking emergency provisions of the Project BioShield Act that allow use of unapproved drugs and vaccines. The Department of Defense said use of the vaccine will be voluntary for now, in contrast with the mandatory program that was blocked by a federal judge in October on the grounds that the vaccine was never properly cleared for use by the Food and Drug Administration. The special authorization follows determinations by the Defense Department and former Health and Human Services secretary Tommy G. Thompson that a formal anthrax emergency exists for troops stationed in some nations abroad. "The Department's current intelligence community assessments establish that there is a heightened risk for U.S. military forces of attack with anthrax," a DOD official said. He said the assessment applies to Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea in particular.[cbw]
• Hegemony or Survival America's Quest for Global Dominance
  By Noam Chomsky
  Published by Owl Books 9/1/2004
  An immediate national bestseller, Hegemony or Survival demonstrates how, for more than half a century the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing -- as in the Cuban missile crisis -- to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. World-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this perilous moment and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky tracks the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of "full spectrum dominance" and vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control -- from unilateralism to the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism -- cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our existence. Lucidly written, thoroughly documented, and featuring a new afterword by the author, Hegemony or Survival is a definitive statement from one of today's most influential thinkers.
• American Empire Project
  Americans have long believed that the very notion of empire is an offense against our democratic heritage, yet in recent months, these two words -- American empire -- have been on everyone's lips. At this moment of unprecedented economic and military strength, the leaders of the United States have embraced imperial ambitions openly. How did we get to this point? And what lies down the road?
• This Pollyanna army
  Bush will not admit that his troops are too exhausted to sustain his vengeful global missions Sidney Blumenthal Thursday January 27, 2005 The Guardian
  The most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush's second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve. In an internal memorandum, he described "the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force".
• Labour's migration squeeze targets unskilled
  Alan Travis and Michael White Tuesday February 8, 2005 The Guardian
  The government is to close the door on low- skilled migrants from the developing world who come to Britain legally under existing work permit schemes, the home secretary, Charles Clarke, disclosed yesterday. The measure is part of Labour's five-year plan for immigration and asylum, which includes a "points system" for new migrants that critics fear will lead to a "two-tier guestworker" labour force. Skilled workers - those with qualifications equal to A-levels and above - will be able to settle in Britain with their families once they have worked for five years and passed an English language and citizenship test. But lower-skilled migrants, mainly from other EU countries, will not be able to bring their families, will be barred from claiming welfare benefits and will be expected to leave after five years. Those from "higher-risk countries" will be required to deposit an unspec ified financial bond which they will forfeit if they fail to return home.
• An election to anoint an occupation
  Salim Lone
  Monday January 31, 2005 The Guardian
  Tony Blair and George Bush were quick to characterise yesterday's election as a triumph of democracy over terror. Bush declared it a "resounding success", while Blair asserted that "The force of freedom was felt throughout Iraq". And yet the election fell so completely short of accepted electoral standards that had it been held in, say, Zimbabwe or Syria, Britain and America would have been the first to denounce it.
  he US has little popular support in the country. It has, however, won the support of the extremely influential Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who tolerates an occupation most of his followers hate, with the single-minded sectarian goal of having the majority Shia at the helm of power in Iraq. The occupation has destroyed Iraq and is destabilising the world by exacerbating the deep animosity that most Arabs and Muslims feel for the US. The Bush administration is now provoking the Muslim world by threats against Iran. The rest of the world looks on, mostly helplessly.
  Salim Lone was director of communications for Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special representative in Iraq, who was killed in August 2003 salimlone@msn.com
• "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote"
  Tuesday, February 01, 2005
  Take a look at an object rescued from the memory hole. It's a New York Times article from the era of the Vietnam War: Peter Grose, "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote" (September 4, 1967, p. 2). Its lead paragraphs read: United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
  According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
  Sounds familiar?

• Financial Times, 25 January 2005 How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation
  by Michael Lind
  In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited. Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western -hemisphere free trade zone.
• In death, imperialism lives on
  For the western media, it is clear that a tourist's tragedy is more important than that of the 'locals' Jeremy Seabrook Friday December 31, 2004 The Guardian
  The number of fishing boats from Sumatra, Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu at sea when the Boxing Day tsunami hit will never be known. There is scarcely any population tally of the crowded coasts. Nameless people are consigned to unmarked graves; in mosques and temples, makeshift mortuaries, people pull aside a cloth, a piece of sacking, to see if those they loved lie beneath. As in all natural disasters, the victims are overwhelmingly the poorest. This time there was something different. The tsunami struck resorts where westerners were on holiday. For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings.

• Iraq War is Bad for Business
  By Jim Lobe | December 31, 2004
  On top of the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc. Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil, are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the Internet survey with consumers in eight countries from Dec. 10-12. One-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States. Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. [Boycott]
• Former US attorney general joins Saddam defence team
  Julian Borger in Washington Thursday December 30, 2004 The Guardian
  Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general, has joined Saddam Hussein's legal team to contest before a special tribunal charges of committing wholesale atrocities, it was announced yesterday. Mr Clark, who led the justice department under President Lyndon Johnson, flew on Tuesday to Amman, Jordan, where the 20-strong international defence team is based. A spokesman for the team, Ziad Khassawneh, said his arrival "honours and inspires us". The defence team already includes one American lawyer, Curtis Doebbler, and a former French foreign minister, Roland Dumas.
• EDITORIAL Are We Stingy? Yes
  Published: December 30, 2004 President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
  We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.
  The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.
• We Need a Real Iran Policy
  By Susan E. Rice
  Thursday, December 30, 2004; Page A27 Has President Bush quietly concluded that the United States can live with a nuclear-armed Iran? If this seems preposterous, recall the president's words at his year-end news conference. Asked about U.S. policy toward Iran, he said: "We're relying upon others, because we've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran . . . in other words, we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now." This bizarre statement obviously does not portend the president's born-again conversion to multilateralism. Rather, it is a false assessment of U.S. influence and a potentially deadly recipe for U.S. acquiescence to a nuclear Iran. Negotiations require making concessions. Neoconservatives argue that such concessions would help sustain the current Islamist government, but most analysts agree that the regime is well entrenched. The alternative to negotiating is for the United States to continue to do nothing. By doing nothing, our self- described wartime president is in fact doing something quite significant: He is ensuring there will be no effective brake on Iran, along with North Korea, going fully nuclear. The writer, assistant secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. [Bush policy] [Partisan]
• China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .
  By FRED KAPLAN Published: December 26, 2004 IT'S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers," only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence. Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous. As an economic power, the United States no longer sets the rules, much less rule the game. As a military power, it vastly outguns the rest of the world, but has a harder time translating armed might into influence.
  . On March 1, the European Union announced that it was raising import tariffs on a long list of American products, and would go on raising them each month until Congress repealed a subsidy for American exporters that had been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Congressmen railed against this intrusion but finally gave in. Americans realized that, in the global economy they largely created and for 60 years dominated, they could no longer do whatever they wanted.
  Last month, China's president, Hu Jintao, embarked on a 12-day tour of Latin America, and wound up making commitments to invest $30 billion in the region. China is now Brazil's second largest trading partner and Chile's largest export market. In trade, technology, investment, education and culture, China has been displacing the United States all across Asia, and is now starting to do the same in America's backyard.
• Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War
  By Dana PriestWashington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01
  The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.
  According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops. As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture. The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for this article.
• Iraq poll hangs on overseas vote
  UN launches £50m operation to reach four million expatriates Jason Burke and Tariq Panja Sunday December 26, 2004 The Observer
  A last-minute push to prepare millions of Iraqis living overseas to vote in the critical elections in their homeland next month has been launched by the United Nations. With only five weeks until the poll, there are still no clear estimates of how many expatriate Iraqis might be eligible to vote, though analysts agree that they could determine its outcome. Around 250,000 Iraqis live in Britain - one of the biggest expatriate communities - with up to four million spread elsewhere around the world.
• Economic Rally for Argentines Defies Forecasts
  Tomas Munita for The New York Times A busy restaurant in Buenos Aires reflects an economic recovery in which exports have zoomed, the currency is stable, investors are gradually returning and unemployment has eased from record highs. By LARRY ROHTER Published: December 26, 2004 BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 23 - When the Argentine economy collapsed in December 2001, doomsday predictions abounded. Unless it adopted orthodox economic policies and quickly cut a deal with its foreign creditors, hyperinflation would surely follow, the peso would become worthless, investment and foreign reserves would vanish and any prospect of growth would be strangled. But three years after Argentina declared a record debt default of more than $100 billion, the largest in history, the apocalypse has not arrived. Instead, the economy has grown by 8 percent for two consecutive years, exports have zoomed, the currency is stable, investors are gradually returning and unemployment has eased from record highs - all without a debt settlement or the standard measures required by the International Monetary Fund for its approval. Argentina's recovery has been undeniable, and it has been achieved at least in part by ignoring and even defying economic and political orthodoxy. Rather than moving to immediately satisfy bondholders, private banks and the I.M.F., as other developing countries have done in less severe crises, the Peronist-led government chose to stimulate internal consumption first and told creditors to get in line with everyone else. "This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies," said Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group in Washington. "While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and they've done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows."
• There Will Be No Peace, Without An End To This Terrorism
  By Stephen Gowans December 24, 2004 On a visit to Jerusalem just before Christmas, British PM Tony Blair expressed optimism about reviving "peace talks" but warned, "There is not going to be any successful negotiation or peace without an end to terrorism."
  Blair wasn't talking about Israel ending its terrorism. And he certainly wasn't talking about ending the war of terror Britain is pursuing as junior partner to the United States. But he could have been. That's because getting the people who keep taking shots at the Anglo-American occupation force in Iraq to stop what they're doing, and putting an end to terror attacks on American civilians, means, in the very first instance, putting an end to the Anglo-American war of terror. And I don't mean the "war on terror" cooked up after 9/11 as a label to make it seem a program of aerial bombing, invasion and torture is new and justified, but the war of terror that is the real face of the Anglo-American imperialist project whose existence antedates 9/11.
• Army Historian Cites Lack of Postwar Plan
  Major Calls Effort in Iraq 'Mediocre' By Thomas E. RicksWashington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 25, 2004; Page A01 The U.S. military invaded Iraq without a formal plan for occupying and stabilizing the country and this high-level failure continues to undercut what has been a "mediocre" Army effort there, an Army historian and strategist has concluded. "There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.
• Iraqis' Dismay Surges as Lights Flicker and Gas Lines Grow
  Leaders Criticized for Energy Shortages By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, December 24, 2004; Page A01
  BAGHDAD -- The car needed gas, so the Matrood family made a day of it. Dawn was still hours away when mom and dad bundled the children into their dirty blue Daewoo sedan and set off for the filling station. Dusk was falling when they finally reached the pump, which was flanked by National Guardsmen in ski masks, intelligence officers in jackets and rows of concrete barricades -- all necessary to protect a product as precious as a few gallons of gasoline in Iraq these days. Motorists line up at a gas station in Baghdad's Sadr City. A wait of 12 hours is not unusual, and at least two men have been killed in line-jumping disputes. "There were days when we spent the night here," said Abdul Razzaq Matrood, who counted himself lucky after spending a mere 12 hours in a gas line two miles long. "We brought our blankets to sleep in the car."
  Energy shortages of every stripe bedevil this country, which sits atop the world's second- largest petroleum reserves. Electricity shuts off for whole days. Prices of scarce cooking fuel have risen nine-fold. And gas lines this month reached new lengths, creating yet another venue for violence
• Quiet, or I'll call democracy
  Iraqi women were long the most liberated in the Middle East. Occupation has confined them to their homes Haifa Zangana Wednesday December 22, 2004 The Guardian The US state department has launched a $10m "Iraqi women's democracy initiative" to train Iraqi women in the skills and practices of democratic life ahead of the forthcoming elections. Paula Dobriansky, US undersecretary of state for global affairs, declared:"We will give Iraqi women the tools, information and experience they need to run for office and lobby for fair treatment." The fact that the money will go mainly to organisations embedded with the US administration, such as the Independent Women's Forum (IWF) founded by Dick Cheney's wife Lynn, was, of course, not mentioned. Of all the blunders by the US administration in Iraq, the greatest is its failure to understand Iraqi people, women in particular. The main misconception is to perceive Iraqi women as silent, powerless victims in a male-controlled society in urgent need of "liberation". This image fits conveniently into the big picture of the Iraqi people being passive victims who would welcome the occupation of their country.
• Delhi schoolboy sparks global porn row
  Luke Harding and agencies in New Delhi Tuesday December 21, 2004 The Guardian To the Indian schoolboy, it must have seemed like an ingenious if indelicate use of new technology. But when the 17-year-old used his mobile phone camera to record his girlfriend giving him oral sex he could have had little idea of the far- reaching global consequences.
  The trouble started a few days after the teenager made the recording, when someone tried to sell a video clip of him and his 16-year-old girlfriend on the Indian online auction site Baazee.com. The firm is a subsidiary of the US auction giant eBay. On Friday detectives arrested Baazee.com's chief executive, Avnish Bajaj, a US citizen and Harvard graduate. On Saturday a court bundled him off to jail for a week.
  More surprisingly, though, the scandal also appears to have provoked the interest of one of the world's most powerful women. Ms Rice is understood to have telephoned the US ambassador in India, David Mulford, about the case. The Bush administration's national security adviser and future secretary of state has let it be known she is furious at Mr Bajaj's humiliating treatment. He is, after all, a US citizen
• On a Deadly Day in Iraq, Republicans Step Up Debate Over Whether Rumsfeld Should Stay
  By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: December 20, 2004 ASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - The continuing debate among Republicans over whether Donald H. Rumsfeld should remain as defense secretary grew more fractious on Sunday, as two prominent senators argued that removing Mr. Rumsfeld would disrupt the coming Iraqi elections, while a third, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said he had "no confidence in Rumsfeld's leadership." Talk of the defense secretary's future dominated the television interview programs on a day when car bombs killed more than 60 people in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. The debate was caught up in fresh accusations by both Democrats and Republicans about the planning in the aftermath of the war.
• A Time for Diplomacy
  By David S. Broder Sunday, December 19, 2004; Page B07 When Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar met recently with reporters, he spent the better part of an hour simply outlining the "huge challenge" the Bush administration faces in trouble spots around the world. Listening to the Indiana Republican, who makes it his business to visit many of those dangerous areas himself, those of us around the table at the Christian Science Monitor-sponsored breakfast were all but overwhelmed. As Lugar recapped his impressions of the aftermath of the disputed election in Ukraine, the ongoing struggle in Iraq, the shaky steps toward democracy and order in Afghanistan, the possibilities of Israeli-Palestinian talks, the nuclear challenges in Iran and North Korea, the backsliding toward autocracy in Russia, the growing economic competition of China and the disrepair in American relations with Europe, it was enough to make your head swim.
  What I took away from his recital was a realization that diplomacy -- not military force -- must be the main tool in meeting these challenges. That is all the more true because of the strong reluctance the American people feel toward engaging in another Iraq or any other struggle so costly in lives and treasure.
  In the lead article of the forthcoming January issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University makes Lugar's point in a more academic fashion. Gaddis is more hopeful about defeating the insurgency in Iraq and moving that country toward democracy than several of the other authors in the same magazine, but he acknowledges that failure is possible. It needs to be kept in perspective, however. "What takes place during the second Bush term in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and especially the Israeli-Palestinian relationship may well be as significant for the Middle East as what occurs in Iraq," he writes. "And what happens in China, India, Russia, Europe and Africa may well be as important for the future of the international system as what transpires in the Middle East." As Gaddis sees it, the historic change of Bush's first term -- a direct response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- was the embrace of the doctrine of preventive war and its application in both Afghanistan and Iraq. While the move against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan gained broad international support, the war against Saddam Hussein did not. Bush's decision to invade Iraq without that assent "provoked complaints that great power was being wielded without great responsibility, followed by an unprecedented collapse of support for the United States abroad," Gaddis writes. "From nearly universal sympathy in the weeks after September 11, Americans within a year and a half found their country widely regarded as an international pariah." It would be a mistake, he argues, either to be intimidated by that reaction or to ignore it. "The American claim of a broadly conceived right to pre-empt danger is not going to disappear, because no other nation or international organization will be prepared anytime soon to assume that responsibility. But the need to legitimize that strategy is not going to go away, either; otherwise, the friction it generates will ultimately defeat it. What this means," Gaddis concludes, "is that the second Bush administration will have to try again to gain multilateral support for the pre- emptive use of U.S. military power [US policy][imperialism]
• Indiana Jones leads Hollywood version of battle for Falluja
  Dan Glaister in Los Angeles Friday December 17, 2004 The Guardian Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency. The film - Hollywood's first foray into the second Iraq conflict - is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet- to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Falluja by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent
  Writing last week for the online journal Slate.com, West said: "If America needs a hard job done, the marines will do it, and they won't lose their humanity in the process or any sleep over pulling the trigger. Yes, they are 'the world's most lethal killing machine.' That's what America needs in battle
• Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena
  By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT Published: December 13, 2004
  ASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say. Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations. Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War. The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations. The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets. [Misinformation]
• New Kelly claim splits medical opinion
  Vikram Dodd Monday December 13, 2004 The Guardian Two of Britain's foremost forensic pathologists have dismissed the claim by paramedics that the weapons expert David Kelly may not have died by cutting his wrists. But other medical experts querying the Hutton report's conclusion that Kelly killed himself by cutting the ulnar artery in his left wrist have taken heart from the claim. Yesterday the Observer reported Dave Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt, both paramedics with more than 15 years' experience, as saying that there was too little blood at the scene compared with other incidents they had attended in which people had cut their wrists.
• New Spy Plan Said to Involve Satellite System
  By DOUGLAS JEHL Published: December 12, 2004 WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - A highly classified intelligence program that the Senate Intelligence Committee has tried unsuccessfully to kill is a new $9.5 billion spy satellite system that could take photographs only in daylight hours and in clear weather, current and former government officials say. The cost of the system, now the single biggest item in the intelligence budget, and doubts about its usefulness have spurred a secret Congressional battle.
  Among the champions of the program, officials said, has been Porter J. Goss, the new director of central intelligence, who served until this summer as the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. But critics, including Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have questioned whether any new satellite system could really evade detection by American adversaries and whether its capabilities would improve on those already in existence or in development. "These satellites would be irrelevant to current threats, and this money could be much better spent on the kind of human intelligence needed to penetrate closed regimes and terrorist networks," said a former government official with direct knowledge of the program. "There are already so many satellites in orbit that our adversaries already assume that just about anything done in plain sight is watched, so it's hard to believe a new satellite, even a stealthy one, could make much of a difference."
• Will Her Voice Ever Be Heard?
  By Ellen Goodman Saturday, December 11, 2004; Page A23 BOSTON -- Ever wonder what happened to the State Department's chief of propaganda? The head of public diplomacy was supposed to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim street. After all that fanfare, the PR seat has been empty lo these many months. Is it possible that no one wants to be chief flack for the gang that couldn't shoot straight?
  Let's take the bungled case of Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. This Iranian dissident is being prevented from publishing her memoirs in the United States because of regulations that prohibit "trading with the enemy."
• Alexander was, after all, defeated
  Oliver Stone's tale of imperial hubris in the Middle East is too close to the bone for American tastes Hywel Williams Friday December 10, 2004 The Guardian For more than 2,300 years Alexander the Great has been the conquerors' conqueror, the one who sets the standard for all the others. Julius Caesar once burst into tears at the contrast between the Macedonian's achievement and his own record. The rage to emulate ensured that Caesar's invading force of Britain included an elephant - the animal first encountered by Alexander on his Indian expedition, which he then deployed in his own army and became ever after a symbol of imperial pomp.
  But the deepest reason for the outrage it has excited is that film is just too explicit about expansionist war. Alexander was, after all, in the end defeated by the rains of India, the heat of Middle Eastern deserts, by his sullen and mutinous troops. This is a film about imperial over-stretch. At its end Stone, for all his enthused worship, shows us a ruler who is half- psychotic - deranged by dreams of destiny that out-strip his capacity. In the age of Rumsfeld and Bush that is a brave and accurate call.
• Troops' Queries Leave Rumsfeld on the Defensive
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: December 9, 2004 AMP BUEHRING, Kuwait, Dec. 8 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld came here Wednesday to lead a morale-lifting town hall discussion with Iraq-bound troops. Instead, he found himself on the defensive, fielding pointed questions from soldiers complaining about aging vehicles that lacked armor for protection against roadside bombs.
  Mr. Rumsfeld, seemingly caught off guard by the sharp questioning, responded that the military was producing extra armor for Humvees and trucks as fast as possible, but that the soldiers would have to cope with equipment shortages. "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time," he said. Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit set to roll into Iraq this week, was the first to step forward, saying that soldiers had had to scrounge through landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called "hillbilly armor" - to bolt to their trucks. "Why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" Specialist Wilson asked Mr. Rumsfeld, drawing cheers and applause from many of the 2,300 soldiers assembled in a cavernous hangar here to meet the secretary.
• Kosovo Killing Fields?
  Report by John Pilger, New Statesman magazine Dated 21/11/99
  Kosovo is today's slow news. Slow news is news that is ignored or minimised. It is a highly effective, though generally unrecognised, form of censorship in democracies. The expulsion and terrorising of 240,000 Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo since Nato took charge is of little media interest. The Society for Endangered People says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee an ethnic-cleansing campaign conducted on a grand scale by the Kosovo Liberation Army. But who cares about Gypsies, let alone the demonised Serbs? [Media]
• War Hawks in Dove's Clothing
  By Stephen Gowans December 7, 2004 While the US has launched an open ended "war on terror," so far claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who had no connection to Osama bin Laden, Washington demands that Russia find a political, not military, solution to its own "war on terror" in Chechnya. There's even an improbably named American Committee for Peace in Chechnya to press the case for diplomacy, whose membership just as improbably includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter national security advisor who sparked the Afghanistan war by secretly arming Afghan warlords, and who, in 1997, wrote a book, The Grand Chessboard, explaining how the United States could achieve global primacy by dominating Eurasia, a huge chunk of real estate that happens to not only include Afghanistan, but Chechnya, as well. The committee also boasts the membership of Reagan secretary of state George Shultz, who headed a committee pressing the White House to invade Iraq; and Bruce P. Jackson, formerly of Lockheed-Martin, who sits on various committees that facilitate the expansion of NATO to former communist countries, which are then expected to place orders for expensive war toys from his former employer. War hawk Richard Perle, Pentagon advisor, and one of the Bush circle's velociraptors, is also a member, as are, among other foreign policy establishment alumni, Al Haig Jr., formerly NATO Supreme Commander and Reagan secretary of state, Cap (The Knife) Weinberger, Reagan's Pentagon boss, and Reagan advisor and diehard anti-communist historian Richard Pipes. Peaceniks? Hardly. More like practioners of a high-stakes game of geopolitics, who've never had a momentary twinge of conscience over the exercise of US military might abroad, especially in connection with the "war on terrorism." So why the aversion to the Russian military exercising its might for the same declared ends?
  Meanwhile, Pakistan's testing rockets capable of carrying nuclear warheads passed without comment, and Washington declined to report south Korea's secret nuclear experiments to the UN Security Council. If only north Korea received the same treatment. But then, if it did, it wouldn't need a nuclear weapons program.
• Bush's Arms Intelligence Panel Works in Secret
  By DOUGLAS JEHL Published: December 6, 2004
  WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - The commission that President Bush appointed last February to assess the state of American intelligence on weapons proliferation has been deliberating entirely in secret and may not depart from that practice before it issues a final report next March, officials of the panel say.
  In the past 10 months, public statements from the commission and its staff have been limited to terse written summaries posted on its Web site after each of its seven closed-door meetings. The secrecy is very different from the practice adopted by the Sept. 11 commission, which had held 12 public hearings and issued 17 staff statements by the time it released its final report in July. The practice of the intelligence commission has provided little public indication of the depth of any problems it has found. Its focus, the proliferation of unconventional weapons, covers the arena that Mr. Bush has described as the most important threat to the country's national security. The commission has created 12 working groups among its staff, but officials will not disclose their assignments. A spokesman defended the closed-door approach, saying that the subjects being reviewed are too delicate for public discussion.
• Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock
  Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday November 29, 2004 The Guardian Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin. The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old. Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth. But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.
• You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is
  In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead
  Naomi Klein Saturday December 4, 2004 The Guardian
  David T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating". The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.
  US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera and al- Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al- Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around. Eliminating doctors The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons".
• The Free World's end?
  Tom Nairn 1 - 12 - 2004
  Tom Nairn presents a searching critique of Timothy Garton Ash's book Free World. He argues that it seeks to conserve the global status quo through a comforting subordination to American power. His wide-ranging survey suggest that the new century is not going to embrace any such outcome.
• Galloway wins Iraq libel victory
  David Pallister Friday December 3, 2004 The Guardian George Galloway, the leftwing rebel MP, won a resounding libel victory against the Daily Telegraph yesterday with a damages award of £150,000. Delivering his high court judgment, Mr Justice Eady described the Telegraph's allegations, based on disputed Iraqi documents found after the end of the Iraq war, as "dramatic and condemnatory". In accusing Mr Galloway of being in the secret pay of Saddam Hussein, the paper had made "a rush to judgment" in "a classic case of publishing and being damned". The Telegraph faces a bill for costs of more than £1.2m.
• US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev
  by Ian Traynor With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev. Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again. But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.
• Clarke acts to save threatened courses
  Matthew Taylor and Donald Macleod Thursday December 2, 2004 The Guardian The government has unveiled plans to stop leading universities closing departments of "strategic importance" following growing concern over a spate of cutbacks at some of England's most prestigious institutions. The move, which the education secretary, Charles Clarke, accepted was a "significant departure" for the government, follows proposals to close a number of high-profile departments, most recently architecture at Cambridge and chemistry at Exeter. Speaking at the education and skills select committee yesterday, Mr Clarke said cabinet ministers had drawn up a list of subject areas including science and technology, far eastern languages, vocational courses and eastern European studies to be protected. "Any sensible government needs to take a long- term view of what our students are studying and whether we have enough graduates in the subjects needed to help our economy and society thrive," Mr Clarke said.
• President Outlines Foreign Policy
  Cooperation Called Top Priority; Onus for Mideast Peace Placed on Palestinians By Dana MilbankWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 2, 2004; Page A32 HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Dec. 1 -- President Bush on Wednesday outlined a second-term foreign policy that would make international cooperation his administration's top priority but put responsibility for Middle East peace efforts on the Palestinians, a tough stance at odds with some U.S. allies.
  A White House official said after the speech that the looming foreign challenges of Bush's second term -- Iran, North Korea and the Israeli- Palestinian conflict -- are likelier to be solved through diplomacy than with the sort of force used in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Diplomacy," the official said, "is essential to consolidate the gains of the first term." [Spin]
• The Iraq war wounded the UN, but it won't be fatal
  The UN and the security council can survive the US campaign of vilification Hans Blix
  Monday November 29, 2004 The Guardian The results of a review of the functioning of the UN, conducted by a panel appointed by the secretary general Kofi Annan, will soon be on the table. That there is a need to discuss an array of questions is not in doubt - but the fact that the most powerful member of the organisation shows disdain for it is not exactly conducive to a positive intergovernmental debate.
• Another Threatening Storm?
  Reviewed by Fred Kaplan Sunday, November 28, 2004; Page BW03 THE PERSIAN PUZZLE The Conflict Between Iran and America By Kenneth M. Pollack. Random House. 539 pp. $26.95
  Rarely has a policy wonk made such a splash as Kenneth M. Pollack did two winters ago. His 2002 bestseller The Threatening Storm convinced hundreds of otherwise liberal opinion leaders -- and, in turn, thousands and possibly millions of their readers and viewers -- that invading Iraq was a good thing to do. Few read the book's final section, which laid out the steps Pollack insisted the United States take before roaring toward Baghdad (smashing al Qaeda and tamping down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others). But Pollack too brushed aside his caveats, appearing on innumerable TV news shows to argue eloquently for war -- a campaign for which he has since apologized, claiming that he, too, had been snookered by bad intelligence.
  Now the specter of Iran, whose nuclear ambitions and resources seem very real, looms before us. Another debate rages over what is to be done. And here comes Pollack with another all-too-pertinent book, The Persian Puzzle. Many will be relieved, and others dismayed, that Pollack opposes war this time out. (In a clear reference to his earlier book, which was subtitled The Case for Invading Iraq, he labels one section of this new work "The Case Against Invading Iran.") An invasion, he notes, is impractical. Iran is four times as large as Iraq and three times as populous, and its terrain is forbiddingly mountainous; besides, as long as the United States is stuck in Iraq, there aren't enough troops. As for launching a coup, the CIA lacks assets; Iran's security apparatus is impenetrable; and, bitterly as most Iranians detest their regime, they hate interlopers even more.
  The dynamic was set in 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow Iran's president, Mohammad Mossadeq, and install Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pollack recounts this episode in absorbing detail, blaming both sides for the ensuing tensions. Mossadeq, "a true eccentric," rejected generous offers on oil profits that might have kept him in power for the sake of martyrdom. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles played into this weird complex and elevated Iranians' traditional xenophobia to an all-consuming passion. Over the next half-century, Mossadeq's ghost has haunted the Iranian landscape, animating every crisis, not least the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and the subsequent seizure of the U.S. embassy, a trauma that, in turn, molded our own attitude toward Tehran.
  The most tempting option is to bomb Iran's nuclear reactors, as the Israelis did with Iraq's Osiraq facility in 1981. But, Pollack laments, the Iranians -- precisely to avoid a repetition -- have dispersed their facilities in underground sites whose locations are unknown.
  So what should we do? Alas, Pollack is as uncertain as everyone else. "There are no easy answers," he cautions in the book's introduction. It's "a problem from Hell. There simply is no school solution," he sighs on the penultimate page. [Victim]
• Terror Case Hinges on a Wobbly Key Player
  By WILLIAM GLABERSON Published: November 27, 2004 his article was reported by William Glaberson, Ian Urbina and Andy Newman and written by Mr. Glaberson.
  The transcripts by federal prosecutors depict a scene that could be out of a B-movie. In a German hotel room bugged by American agents, a Yemeni sheik was murmuring about jihad, a federal agent was posing as a former Black Panther eager to give millions to terrorists, and a roundish Yemeni man with a checkered past was egging on the others in his new role as one of the United States government's favorite - and best-paid - informers. In time, the informer, Mohamed Alanssi, would come spectacularly undone. This month he set himself on fire outside the White House because of a tangled dispute with the F.B.I. His act, and the attention it has drawn to his strange story, have damaged what may be the biggest terrorism financing case in this country. He is, it turns out, a former American Embassy employee in Yemen who was fired twice and left his country with a warrant out for his arrest for his role in a financial dispute.
• Forecast Frosty for U.S.-Canadian Ties
  Cultural Gap Between Neighbors Widens Even as Economies Grow Closer By Doug StruckWashington Post Foreign Service Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A24 TORONTO -- The weather won't be the only thing that's cool when President Bush visits neighboring Canada next week. Longtime observers here say the societies in Canada and the United States are drifting further apart in values and outlook even as their economies become more closely intertwined. Politically, they say, the two countries' populations are more estranged than at any time in recent memory, and Canadians are becoming increasingly critical of their southern neighbors
• Colin Powell: Failed Opportunist
  By Robert Parry November 26, 2004
  Colin Powell's admirers - especially in the mainstream press - have struggled for almost two years to explain how and why their hero joined in the exaggerations and deceptions that led the nation into the disastrous war in Iraq. Was he himself deceived by faulty intelligence or was he just acting as the loyal soldier to his commander-in-chief? But there is another, less flattering explanation that fits with the evidence of Powell's life story: that the outgoing secretary of state has always been an opportunist who consistently put his career and personal status ahead of America's best interests. From his earliest days as a junior officer in Vietnam through his acquiescence to George W. Bush's Iraq adventure, Colin Powell repeatedly has failed to stand up against actions that were immoral, unethical or reckless. At every turning point, Powell protected his career above all else.
• Smoking while Iraq burns
  Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to everyone's pain but its own Naomi Klein Friday November 26, 2004 The Guardian
  Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine from Appalachia, who has been christened "the face of Falluja" by pro-war pundits, and the "the Marlboro man" by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller "after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat" in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. Gazing lovingly at Miller, the CBS News anchor Dan Rather informed his viewers: "For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I."
  When the Lancet published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry just repeated his outrageous (and frankly racist) claim that Americans "are 90% of the casualties in Iraq". There was a message sent by all of this silence, and the message was that these deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionable logic that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters became complicit in the dehumanisation of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that some lives are expendable, insufficiently important to risk losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue unchecked.
• Congress Seeks to Curb International Court
  Measure Would Threaten Overseas Aid Cuts to Push Immunity for U.S. Troops By Colum LynchWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 26, 2004; Page A02
  UNITED NATIONS -- The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal. The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas. More than two years ago, Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, as they are known, that vow not to transfer to the court U.S. nationals accused of committing war crimes abroad.
• Withdrawal is the only honorable way out
  By DOUG BANDOW
  WASHINGTON -- Iraq has become the central issue in America's presidential campaign, but neither candidate has a solution for a conflict that has cost more than 1,100 American lives. Unfortunately, the killing will continue until the United States and its allies withdraw their forces, leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.
  The best option is a quick exit, with a willingness to admit any friendly Iraqis who want to come to America. The administration has blundered; its current Iraq policy is unsustainable. The U.S. must pull out.
  Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World." The Japan Times: Nov. 1, 2004
• Abolish the CIA!
  By Chalmers Johnson
  21 October 2004, pp. 25-28.
  It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States.
  But the US was willing to overlook almost anything the Pakistani dictator did in order to keep him committed to the anti-Soviet jihad. After the Soviet invasion, Brzezinski wrote to Carter: "This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy." History will record whether Brzezinski made an intelligent decision in giving a green light to Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons in return for assisting the anti-Soviet insurgency.
  On September 26, 1996, the Taliban conquered Kabul. The next day they killed the formerly Soviet-backed President Najibullah, expelled 8,000 female undergraduate students from Kabul University, and fired a similar number of women schoolteachers. As the mujahidin closed in on his palace, Najibullah told reporters: "If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism." His comments would prove all too accurate.
• Bush plays action hero in security row
  Jonathan Franklin in Santiago and Julian Borger in Washington Monday November 22, 2004 The Guardian He may not be his party's most famous action hero, but George Bush bolstered his tough-guy credentials on Saturday night when he waded into a melee in Santiago to rescue one of his secret service bodyguards. The president, on his first foreign trip since being re-elected, strode off the red carpet after a fracas broke out between American secret service agents and Chilean police blocking their way to an official function. He reached into the crowd and yanked out the bodyguard, then walked away, straightening his cuffs and looking none too pleased. Hours later, the Chilean president, Ricardo Lagos, abruptly cancelled a grand state dinner for 200 because White House security was insisting all the guests, including Santiago's finest, would have to pass through metal detectors and possibly be searched. "President Lagos considered it unacceptable that the top authorities in the country and leading businessmen be submitted to searches that are humiliating," a presidential aide told the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.
  A small working dinner was held instead, but the incident reflected the bruising effect of the overwhelming White House security retinue on a smaller country.
  Tension between security officials in Chile and their US counterparts had been building for months before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Santiago. "The Americans were asking for one of the events to be moved because they didn't approve of the location," said a top member of the Apec organising committee in Chile. "Finally, the Chilean authorities told them, 'Look, we have 21 heads of state invited to this event, if you don't want to go, fine'."
• Spats Over Security Roil Summit in Chile
  After Saturday Scuffle, State Dinner Canceled as U.S. Demands Screening By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A01 SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 21 -- For President Bush, it must have been like going out without his wallet. He turned around and the presidential shadow -- his Secret Service agent -- was gone. Moments later, Bush single-handedly rescued the agent from a boisterous scuffle between U.S. and Chilean security forces. The role reversal became the talk of an international economic summit that was studded with bizarre incidents in which diplomacy took a beating, in some cases, literally.
  And in a final summit twist, Chilean authorities canceled an elaborate state dinner for 200 that had been planned for Sunday night as the summit's climax after President Ricardo Lagos would not agree to the Secret Service requirement that his guests pass through metal detectors. The event was downgraded to a small working dinner for the two presidents and their staffs.
  It took Bush several minutes to realize what was happening. The president and the first lady walked on through the door onto a big red carpet, looking relaxed. They greeted Lagos and his wife, Luisa Duran. "You want us to pose here?" Bush asked Lagos with a grin, and they turned to face a wall of flashes. Then Bush either realized he was missing something, or he heard the commotion. The president, who is rarely alone, even in his own house, turned and walked back to the front door unaccompanied, facing the backs of a sea of dark suits. Bush, with his right hand, reached over the suits and pointed insistently at Trotta. At first the officials, with their backs to him and their heads in the rumble, did not realize it was the president intervening. Bush then braced himself against someone and lunged to retrieve the agent, who was still arguing with the Chileans. The shocked Chilean officials then released Trotta. Trotta walked in behind Bush, who looked enormously pleased with himself. He was wearing the expression that some critics call a smirk, and his eyebrows shot up as if to wink at bystanders. Bush adjusted his right cufflink and muttered something to Lagos, took the first lady's arm and headed into dinner of grilled fish.
• Protests greet Bush at Asia-Pacific summit
  Tom Burgis in Santiago Saturday November 20, 2004 The Guardian President George Bush flew into a stormy reception last night on his first foreign trip since re-election, as tens of thousands of protesters sought to disrupt a summit of leaders from Asia and the Americas. Police used tear gas and water cannon as dozens of masked youths broke off from a rally of up to 50,000 people to throw rocks, tear up park benches and hurl molotov cocktails in the Chilean capital, Santiago. Several officers and protesters were injured, with at least 130 arrests.
  At 500,000, the Palestinian community in Chile is the largest outside the Middle East.
• Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos
  Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign Service Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01 BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.
  Iraqi health officials like to surprise visitors by pointing out that the nutrition issue facing young Iraqis a generation ago was obesity. Malnutrition, they say, appeared in the early 1990s with U.N. trade sanctions championed by Washington to punish the government led by President Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait in 1990.
• Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says
  By CARLOTTA GALL Published: November 19, 2004 David Guttenfelder/Associated Press Afghan farmers' sons watched in April as government workers destroyed poppy fields in Karezaq. Experts call the eradication effort inadequate. KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest levels in the country's history and in the world, the United Nations announced on Thursday. "In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, on the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."
• The Greatest Political Scandal of Our Time
  Iraq: The Unthinkable as Normalcy
  By JOHN PILGER
  Edward S. Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil," has never seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organised and systematic way rests on 'normalisation'," wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals . . . others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public." [Media]
• Powell, moderate voice of US, quits
  Hawks take control as Condoleezza Rice is poised to replace Britain's closest Washington ally Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Tuesday November 16, 2004 The Guardian The Bush administration was stripped of its last dissenting voice of moderation yesterday when the secretary of state, Colin Powell, resigned and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser who is known for her conservative instincts, was lined up to replace him. Mr Powell's departure, which came after four years of bureaucratic struggle and frustration, could have far-reaching consequences for George Bush's second term, and America's outlook on the world. Ms Rice could be formally nominated as early today, ac cording to senior administration sources, a move that would put Washington's hawks in unchallenged control of the country's foreign policy. Mr Powell's resignation robs the Blair government of its closest ally in Washington
• Porton Down unlawfully killed airman in sarin tests
  Rob Evans and Sandra Laville Tuesday November 16, 2004 The Guardian
  The family of an airman who died in government nerve gas experiments more than 50 years ago is demanding an apology from the Ministry of Defence after an inquest ruled he had been unlawfully killed. After one of the longest lasting cover ups of the cold war, relatives of Ronald Maddison, were yesterday given the justice they sought. They are now calling for compensation from the MoD, as are up to 550 ex-servicemen who claim they too were duped into submitting to the tests. The multiple claims could run into the millions of pounds. Maddison, from Consett, Co Durham, was aged 20 when he collapsed and died in 1953 after liquid nerve gas was deliberately dripped on to his arm by scientists at the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire. [cbw] [Experimentation]
• Long walk to freedom
  Mordechai Vanunu served 18 years in an Israeli prison for blowing the whistle on the country's nuclear weapons programme. Last week he was arrested again - but not before he had given Duncan Campbell the following exclusive interview Monday November 15, 2004 The Guardian It was precisely noon in Jerusalem and the bells in the tower of St George's Cathedral were echoing over the city. The short, trim man in the apricot shirt and dark trousers who was ringing them was smiling broadly. "Down there," he said, when he had given a final pull to the centre bell and was gazing from the turrets to the sprawling civic building below, "down there is where they sentenced me to 18 years in prison. This is my way of saying I am still here." That was 10 days ago. Since then, Mordechai Vanunu, who emerged from his 18-year sentence for revealing that Israel had a nuclear weapons programme only seven months ago, has been re- arrested and accused of disclosing classified information and of breaching the restrictions that forbid him from associating with foreigners.
• Lawmakers Divided on C.I.A. Chief's Leadership
  By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune November 14, 2004 ASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Amid reports of serious turmoil in the Central Intelligence Agency under the new leadership of Porter Goss, legislators differed sharply today over whether Mr. Goss was bringing needed change to what one Republican senator called a "dysfunctional" and a "rogue" agency or was, as a Democrat said, recklessly driving out capable intelligence veterans. The controversy erupted as the Congress prepared to return for a post-election session under pressure to reach accord on legislation that would create the powerful post of national director of intelligence, a position for which Mr. Goss would presumably be a top candidate.
  But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the very reasons behind Mr. Goss's appointment to run the powerful agency after all its intelligence failures related to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq was undertaking deeply needed change. "I think this kind of shakeup is absolutely necessary," Mr. McCain said on the ABC News program "This Week." "One thing that has become abundantly clear, if it wasn't already: this is a dysfunctional agency, and in some ways a rogue agency." It was Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, who reportedly told President Bush that evidence that Iraq held unconventional weapons was a "slam dunk," or a sure thing, Mr. McCain said. And, the senator added, "We know very little more about North Korea and Iran than we did 10 years ago." "This agency needs to be reformed," Mr. McCain said, adding, "Porter Goss is on the right track."
• Long Fall for Pentagon Star
  Druyun Doled Out Favors by the Millions By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01 In the macho world of the Pentagon, Darleen A. Druyun was rare: a woman who had scaled the heights of power, controlled billions of dollars in weapons programs and could punish or reward global corporations and the men who ran them. Once the most feared woman in the world of military contracting, Druyun, 57, helped direct the Air Force's $30 billion procurement budget -- nearly three times the size of the Army's.
  She was at the peak of her power as a top Air Force weapons buyer in 1999 when she scolded leaders of Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, for some of its work on satellites and rockets. Her tone was blunt: One program had "pitiful" software and a company proposal had a "crappy design." The incident contributed to the early retirement of one Lockheed executive and the company rushed to address Druyun's concerns, according to several people familiar with the situation. But now it is Druyun who has fallen from grace. In April, she pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for negotiating for a job with Boeing Co. while still supervising the company's work for the Air Force. Last month she stunned military and industry leaders by admitting that she gave Boeing preferential treatment for years before taking a job with the company. The Pentagon announced last week that because of Druyun's illegal behavior it has begun investigations into all of her contracting-related actions during her nine years as the Air Force's deputy acquisition chief. The Defense Department also began the largest review of how it buys weapons since the investigation of influence peddling in the 1980s known as Operation Ill Wind. The fallout could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars as companies unfairly ruled out of contracts seek restitution for the costs they incurred during the bidding process. [Corruption]
• The 2004 Elections in the United States
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  Commentary No. 149, Nov, 15, 2004 " George W. Bush has been reelected President of the United States, and he has increased his margin of support in both houses of the Congress. What happens now - in the United States, in the world? We have to start any analysis with an appraisal of Bush.
  Within the Republican party, Bush has three different constituencies: the Christian right, big business, and the militarists. Each is feeling its oats right now, and putting pressure on Bush to pursue its interests. Their priorities are however quite different, and none of the three constituencies gives more than nominal support to the concerns of the other two.
  The militarists want to go back to the days, more recent, when the United States was the unquestioned hegemonic power in the world, when it could dictate what should happen everywhere, or almost everywhere. This constituency took top place in the first Bush administration, and the question is whether they can maintain that slot in the second Bush administration. The Iraq war, it is clear, has not gone the way the militarists and the neo-cons had hoped and predicted. And they are running into difficulty at home, not merely with the antiwar movement, but with conservative and centrist forces, who are bemoaning the folly and the economic cost of the invasion. It is also clear that the armed forces themselves, while they are always happy to have more money for their hardware, are quite grumpy about being caught, once again, in a military conflict that they are far from certain to win. They fear the backlash that withdrawal would cause the armed forces themselves. The top leaders of the armed forces remember Vietnam; they were all junior officers then. The civilian militarists seem to want to take a fast flight forward - invade Iran, invade Cuba. This is however the arena in which the Bush agenda seems least likely to succeed, or even to be tried.
• Howard refuses to congratulate Bush
  Nicholas Watt, political correspondent Monday November 8, 2004 The Guardian Michael Howard deepened his feud with the White House yesterday when he pointedly refused to offer the traditional post-election congratulations to George Bush. Angered by a White House edict banning him from meeting the president - as punishment for criticising Tony Blair over Iraq - Mr Howard said it would be wrong for him to express any view on the poll. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph the arch-Atlanticist was asked whether he was pleased that a fellow rightwinger had beaten a liberal. He said: "I made it clear that I could work perfectly well with both President Bush and President Kerry ... I don't think it's appropriate to express a view on those elections." Mr Howard's remarks may appear bland. But in the language of diplomacy they amount to a rebuke to Mr Bush - and in particular to his polling guru, Karl Rove, who told him he would not be welcome at the White House after he criticised Mr Blair's use of intelligence before the Iraq war. Mr Rove was reported by the Sun as telling Howard aides: "You can forget about him meeting the president. Don't bother coming."
• An Interview with Stephen Gowans, Canadian Writer and Political Activist
  by Angie, SF-IMC Poster Wednesday, Nov. 03, 2004 at 12:14 AM Stephen Gowans, Canadian writer and political activist based in Ottawa, whose articles can be found anywhere on the Internet; for instance, Counterpunch, Media Monitors, etc., and his own web site, "What's Left?" possesses the heart and soul of the traditional political Left. SF-IMC poster, Angie, in a wide ranging interview with Stephen recently, found him to be intelligent, analytical, and, yes, funny.
• An American scapegoat in London
  In Britain, America-bashing is so bad that I fear for my safety Carol Gould Saturday October 16, 2004 The Guardian
• The cast are votes
  Hollywood loves a party - but which one will its biggest names back come election time next month, Republican or Democratic? John Patterson studies the power-players' lines Saturday October 16, 2004 The Guardian Republicans love Hollywood. They say they hate it, but they don't. They love hating it. If every studio was nuked tomorrow they'd cry themselves to sleep for months. It's complicated. But nothing puts the roses in their cheeks, and nothing riles the born-again bigots quite like a splenetic rant, in Congress or on the stump, against Hollywood and all its perceived moral and spiritual degeneracy. It's all bullshit, of course: Hollywood has always been more dependable a whipping-boy than even Bill Clinton. It was here before Bubba, and it'll be around long after Bin Laden has gone. For Republicans, it's the gift that keeps on giving. The picture they paint - of a sewer-city disgorging pornography and violence, godlessness, semen and suntan lotion all over middle America's godfearing citizenry - is always a shock to the folks who actually live in what is after all the City of Angels. The metropolis the Republicans conjure up makes Sodom and Gomorrah sound like Minneapolis-St Paul. So, given the Republican party's marked distaste for all things Hollywood, it was something of a novelty to see a bona fide Tinseltown movie star speaking from the podium at primetime during the party's convention in September. No, not Arnold - he's not an actor any more, he's a perfect storm of empty-suit politics, vacuous celebrity and dazzling special effects - but Ron Silver, star of Reversal Of Fortune and Blue Steel. OK, so he's a character actor more than he's a movie star, but the "Grand Old Party" will settle for whatever Hollywood apostates it can get. And he's a registered Democrat. The last time Silver took an active political role was at the Democratic convention in 1992, after spending the primary season campaigning for liberal senator Bill Bradley. 9/11 changed all that, and Silver has been hot for Dubya for a couple of years now. In his speech, Silver quoted General Douglas MacArthur in approving tones (he's the one who fancied nuking North Korea, so he's hot-hot-hot right now). He also roused the Republican rabble in fine style, barking, "We will never forgive! Never forget! Never excuse!" provoking in the crowd the same rabid, vengeful fury one witnesses upon tossing a dog into a piranha tank. Nothing on Broadway lets you work the audience's G-spot like that.
• Poll reveals world anger at Bush
  Eight out of 10 countries favour Kerry for president Alan Travis, home affairs editor Friday October 15, 2004 George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries - including some of its closest allies - growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office. According to a survey, voters in eight out of the 10 countries, including Britain, want to see the Democrat challenger, John Kerry, defeat President Bush in next month's US presidential election. The poll, conducted by 10 of the world's leading newspapers, including France's Le Monde, Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Canada's La Presse, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian, also shows that on balance world opinion does not believe that the war in Iraq has made a positive contribution to the fight against terror. The results show that in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, a growing hostility to the US and a not-too- strong endorsement of Mr Kerry. But they all make a clear distinction between this kind of anti-Americanism and expressing a dislike of American people. On average 68% of those polled say they have a favourable opinion of Americans. The 10-country poll suggests that rarely has an American administration faced such isolation and lack of public support amongst its closest allies. The only exceptions to this trend are the Israelis - who back Bush 2-1 over Kerry and see the US as their security umbrella - and the Russians who, despite their traditional anti- Americanism, recorded unexpectedly favourable attitudes towards the US in the survey conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan tragedy.
• The making of the terror myth
  Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports Friday October 15, 2004 The Guardian Since the attacks on the United States in September 2001, there have been more than a thousand references in British national newspapers, working out at almost one every single day, to the phrase "dirty bomb". There have been articles about how such a device can use ordinary explosives to spread lethal radiation; about how London would be evacuated in the event of such a detonation; about the Home Secretary David Blunkett's statement on terrorism in November 2002 that specifically raised the possibility of a dirty bomb being planted in Britain; and about the arrests of several groups of people, the latest only last month, for allegedly plotting exactly that
• Saudis Blame U.S. and Its Role in Iraq for Rise of Terror
  By JOEL BRINKLEY Published: October 14, 2004 Reuters A suicide bomb in May 2003 in Riyadh killed 25, the start of far more aggressive terrorism in Saudi Arabia. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 13 - Seventeen months into a shadowy terror campaign that has killed more than 100 people, numerous Saudis express less anger at the insurgents than at the United States for its invasion of Iraq, the signal event that they say touched off the attacks inside the kingdom. In interviews over the last week, the Saudis condemned the terror attacks, aimed primarily at foreigners, but called them a small inconvenience that has not forced them to make significant changes in their daily lives. By contrast, they expressed unremitting disdain for the United States.
• Blix Says Iraq War Stimulated World Terrorism
  By REUTERS Published: October 13, 2004 Filed at 4:57 p.m. ET STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said Wednesday the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had failed tragically in its aim of making the world a safer place and succeeded only in stimulating terrorism. Blix, in implicit criticism of the main protagonists President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said the action had also failed to deter any ambitions on the part of Iran or North Korea to develop nuclear weapons. ``The acknowledged gain of the war was that a treacherous and murderous dictator (Saddam Hussein) was removed, but the rest has been tragedy and failure,'' he told Reuters in an interview. ``It has stimulated terrorism.'' Many critics of the invasion argue it opened Iraq to Islamist militants involved in an insurrection against coalition forces, while distracting attention from a campaign against the al-Qaeda group blamed for September, 2001 attacks on the United States. ``Is the world safer? No. It's not safer in Iraq,'' he said in his native Stockholm. ``If North Korea and Iran are contemplating going for weapons of mass destruction, then it hasn't stopped them. It has not solved the Middle East conflict.''
• The Referendum
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 147, Oct. 15, 2004
• Heavy hand of the law
  Last week's seizure of material belonging to anti-globalisation websites could have serious consequences for citizen publishers. Bobbie Johnson reports Thursday October 14, 2004 The Guardian
  It is a story with components that would have most conspiracy theorists running for the nearest tinfoil hat shop: a radical media organisation, the FBI and an apparently anonymous foreign government. Last week, Rackspace, a hosting company with headquarters in Texas, handed two of its London- based web servers to the FBI after a subpoena for their contents was issued by a US district court. The servers contained material belonging to the Independent Media Centre - better known as Indymedia - a conglomeration of global radical anti-globalisation sites produced by ordinary citizens. Indymedia claims it was not informed of the decision to seize its content, nor has it been told the reasons, despite the fact that 20 sites and more than 1m pieces of content were affected. The FBI has said it was acting on behalf of a foreign government, though for the American subpoena to have power in the UK, it would need approval from either the British courts or the home secretary. Such agreements would usually be made over investigations into terrorism, though nobody involved has been able to confirm this. [human rights]
• Bush special envoy embroiled in controversy over Iraq debt
  Consortium plans to cash in as Baker asks countries to end £200bn burden Naomi Klein Wednesday October 13, 2004 The Guardian President Bush's special envoy, James Baker, who has been trying to persuade the world to forgive Iraq's crushing debts, is simultaneously working for a commercial concern that is trying to recover money from Iraq, according to confidential documents. Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result.
• The question mark over McDonald's
  Rebranding drops iconic golden arches logo, but fast food giant denies change was prompted by slump in profits Sandra Laville Wednesday October 13, 2004 The Guardian The golden arches of McDonald's are among the three most recognisable images across the globe. From the third world through to the developed west, only Coca-Cola and the crucifix are better known. Consider then just how far outside the box a group of advertising executives were thinking at the brainstorming session which came up with this one. Ronald McDonald should ditch his golden arches and opt instead for ... a great big question mark. Leaked to a marketing magazine yesterday, news of the temporary rebranding - which was due to be launched across the country on Friday - left communications staff and advertising executives desperately trying to regain ground. Locked in meetings at McDonald's UK headquarters at east Finchley, north London, they emerged later to mount a vigorous defence of the new advertising campaign in which the iconic arches are replaced by a golden query, intended to signify a change in the brand from junk food to healthy eating
• The Role of Radio Sawa In Mideast Questioned
  U.S.-Funded Station Lacks Influence, Report Indicates By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A12 Radio Sawa, an Arab-language pop music and news station funded by the U.S. government and touted by the Bush administration as a success in reaching out to the Arab world, has failed to meet its mandate of promoting democracy and pro-American attitudes, according to a draft report prepared by the State Department's inspector general. The report credited Radio Sawa with attracting a large audience in key Middle East countries but said the station, which has an annual budget of $22 million, has been so preoccupied with building an audience through its music that it has failed to adequately measure whether it is influencing minds.
  The report also questioned the validity of some research given to Congress by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Radio Sawa's parent, to demonstrate its success. Two independent panels of Arab-language experts hired by the inspector general's office gave the programming a mixed review, saying it did not match al-Jazeera in terms of quality and that parents would prefer that their teenagers not listen to Radio Sawa because its broadcasts contained such poor Arabic grammar. "Radio Sawa failed to present America to its audience," one panel concluded. [Propaganda]
• TV channels to rubbish Kerry on eve of poll
  Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday October 12, 2004 The Guardian One of America's biggest television companies has announced plans to broadcast a film days before the presidential election that portrays the Democratic candidate John Kerry as betraying his fellow soldiers in Vietnam. The conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group will reportedly present the film as news on the 62 local channels it owns nationwide. The film will replace normal primetime programmes supplied by the national networks and reach up to a quarter of the electorate, many in critical battleground states, about a week before the election on November 2. In the film, Stolen Honour: Wounds That Never Heal, former US prisoners of war claim that their North Vietnamese interrogators used anti- war statements by Mr Kerry to undermine morale and persuade them to admit war crimes. A press release for the film, made by a conservative journalist and ex-marine, Carlton Sherwood, accused Mr Kerry of "lies, false testimony and distortions" for his remarks to Congress in 1971, saying US troops had been responsible for atrocities.
• A Wall Street Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends From Baghdad
  Published on Thursday, September 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org by Farnaz Fassihi Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
• Weapons We Can't Afford
  By David IgnatiusTuesday, October 12, 2004; Page A23 In this year's presidential debates, George Bush and John Kerry have touted new defense and domestic spending programs -- at the same time they blithely promised to cut the federal budget deficit in half over the next four years. Even an electorate made dizzy by debates and attack ads can figure out that the numbers don't add up.
  But the United States is still spending billions for weapons systems that were conceived to fight an adversary that has already been defeated -- the Soviet Union.
  starting point for defense budget skeptics is national missile defense. The Bush administration plans to spend $10.7 billion this year in a rush to deploy a system that even some of its own experts say isn't ready. That spending could be cut in half, to allow the testing for a system that would eventually work against potential adversaries such as North Korea or Iran.
  Perhaps the craziest Pentagon spending plan is to purchase 30 new Virginia-class attack submarines, at a cost of (this is not a misprint) $2 billion each. The United States already has the best attack subs in the world -- those of the Los Angeles class. What's the threat that these $2 billion subs are needed to combat? Cutting the program would save $2 billion to $3 billion annually. Then there's the ultimate legacy system -- America's vast nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon is spending $7.8 billion to maintain 6,000 strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including 800 targeted on the Soviet Union -- oops, I mean, Russia. Why keep all these weapons at a time when the country can't afford and doesn't need them?
• US seizes webservers from independent media sites
  Rachel Shabi Monday October 11, 2004 The Guardian
  American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers. On Thursday a court order was issued to Rackspace, an American-owned web hosting company in Uxbridge, Middlesex, forcing it to hand over two servers used by Indymedia, an international media network which covers of social justice issues and provides a "news-wire", to which its users contribute. The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries. It is unclear why, or to where, the servers have been taken. The FBI, speaking to the French AFP, acknowledged that a subpoena had been issued but said this was at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities.
• For Marines, a Frustrating Fight
  Some in Iraq Question How and Why War Is Being Waged By Steve Fainaru Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
  ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- Scrawled on the helmet of Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez are the letters FDNY. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps. "To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20. Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy. "Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."
  ?.Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga., agreed: "We're basically proving out that the government is wrong," he said. "We're catching them in a lie."
• U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
  By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE Published: October 8, 2004 WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Enriched with billions of dollars raised by exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American arms inspector for Iraq has found. The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released Wednesday. But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons - working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.
• Dear Mike, Iraq sucks
  Civilian contractors are fleecing taxpayers; US troops don't have proper equipment; and supposedly liberated Iraqis hate them. After the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore received a flood of letters and emails from disillusioned and angry American soldiers serving in Iraq. Here, in an exclusive extract from his new book, we print a selection
• Fox News apologises for Kerry fabrication
  Oliver Burkeman in New York Monday October 4, 2004 The Guardian Fox News, the influential rightwing US television network, said yesterday it had "reprimanded" its chief political correspondent after its website carried fabricated quotes attributed to John Kerry, in which he called himself a "metrosexual" who enjoys getting manicures. The network, owned by Rupert Murdoch, apologised for the article in which the Democratic challenger was quoted telling a rally in Florida: "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Comparing himself to the president, Mr Kerry was supposed to have said: "I'm metrosexual - he's a cowboy." Women voters, he purportedly added, "should like me! I do manicures." The article appeared under the byline of Carl Cameron, who has been following Mr Kerry on the campaign trail. It had been posted on the site, the network said in a statement, because of "fatigue and bad judgment, rather than malice."
• Guantanamo has 'failed to prevent terror attacks'
  Martin Bright, home affairs editor Sunday October 3, 2004 The Observer Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.
  It was performed by new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'. According to Christino, most of the approximately 600 detainees at Guantánamo - including four Britons - at worst had supported the Taliban in the civil war it had been fighting against the Northern Alliance before the 11 September attacks, but had had no contact with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.
  Earlier this year, three British released detainees, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul Rhuhel Ahmed, revealed that they had all confessed to meeting bin Laden and Mohamed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, at a camp in Afghanistan in 2000. All had cracked after three months isolated in solitary confinement and interrogation sessions in chains that lasted up to 12 hours daily. Eventually, MI5 proved what they had said initially - that none had left the UK that year. Rasul had been working at a branch of Currys [Expertise]
• How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence
  By DAVID BARSTOW Published: October 3, 2004
  his article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow. In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States. Those tubes became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. [HEU] [Intelligence] [Camouflage]
• THE DRAFT CARD
  The Option Nobody's Pushing. Yet. By JAMES DAO Published: October 3, 2004 HARLESTON, W.Va. - In the worried steel town of Weirton, W.Va., last week, the first question from the crowd that came out to hear Senator John Edwards was not about the economy, tariffs or health care. It was about the draft: Is a new one coming?
  There is good reason to ask. By most accounts, the military, particularly the Army, has been spread thin by America's global commitments, and signs of strain are mounting.
• Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush
  Published: October 3, 2004 ou can run but you can't hide: Oct. 5 will bring the perfect storm in this year's culture wars. It's on that strategically chosen date, four Tuesdays before the election, that the DVD of "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be released along with not one but two new Michael Moore books. It's also the release date of the equally self-effacing Ann Coulter's latest rant, of a new DVD documentary, "Horns and Halos," that revisits the Bush mystery year of 1972, and of an R.E.M. album, "Around the Sun," that gets in its own political licks at the state of the nation.
  As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.
  The president - who after 9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists."
• Interest in Bioterror Issues Puts Doctor Under Scrutiny and His Life in Turmoil
  By JASON GEORGE and JUDITH MILLER Published: October 3, 2004 r. Kenneth M. Berry had become well known in some circles as a small-town emergency room doctor with a consuming interest in the threat of bioterrorism. He was also a bit of a puzzle, impressing some friends and associates with his high-placed biodefense connections while striking others as a self-appointed crusader. But on Aug. 5, in dramatic fashion, Dr. Berry seemed to become something more: quarry in the investigation of the deadly anthrax letter attacks in the fall of 2001. On that day, agents from the F.B.I. and the United States Postal Service raided his large colonial home and former apartment in Wellsville, a village in western New York, as well as his parents' beach house on the Jersey Shore.
  Where the investigation may lead is unclear. But it has put a fresh spotlight on the government's frustrated attempts to find the killer or killers behind the anthrax mailings, an effort that has gone on for three years without an arrest [cbw]
• Inquiry Stymied on Company With Air Force Ties
  By DIANA B. HENRIQUES Published: October 2, 2004 f you're a military officer, you can't miss First Command Financial Planning of Fort Worth. It sells life insurance and investments to young officers serving around the world. Many of its executives and most of its agents were officers once themselves, and they let you know it. A parade of retired generals and admirals serve on its advisory boards. With more than 300,000 customers, virtually all of them current or former officers, the company depends on the military for its very existence. And in a smaller way the military relies on First Command. The company, like others in this market, has long sponsored popular events like the Marine Corps Marathon and the Air Force talent show, Tops in Blue. So First Command was not happy a year ago when it discovered that a legal office at Air Force headquarters had put out a notice asking military lawyers in the field for feedback on "reports of possible unethical or overly aggressive" sales practices by the company's agents. The notice also raised questions about the suitability of the company's core product, an archaic and expensive type of mutual fund with sales fees that eat up half of an investor's first-year contributions. First Command fought back: it complained to the second- most-powerful general in the Air Force. And it was heard.
• From a Virtual Shadow, Messages of Terror By Ariana Eunjung Cha
  Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 2, 2004; Page A01 SAN FRANCISCO -- He calls himself Abu Maysara al Iraqi, or father of Maysara the Iraqi, and he's a master at being everywhere and nowhere in the virtual world, constantly switching his online accounts and taking advantage of new technologies to issue his communiqués to the world. American Internet sleuths know next to nothing about him, whether Abu Maysara is his real name, whether he's an Iraqi or even whether he's in Iraq. What is clear is that he is one of the most important sources of information from the country's insurgency, getting his message out through the Internet, and U.S. authorities are trying to silence him. His updates, terse and businesslike, are released several times a week on radical Islamic Web sites. Acting as a spokesman for Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most wanted guerrilla leader in Iraq, he variously reports attacks on U.S. soldiers and killings of hostages. His words and images reach millions of people when they open their newspapers, turn on their TVs or go online in search of news. "There's no way of stopping it anymore," said Evan F. Kohlmann, a counterterrorism consultant. "It's extremely frustrating. They can send out quality videos to millions of people uncensored." As the 2004 presidential election approaches, the Bush administration finds itself in a propaganda war, trying to promote a picture of security and progress in Iraq. But Abu Maysara's Internet communiqués convey another image.
• Italians Divided After Return of 'Simonas'
  Hostages' Criticism of War Stirs Anger By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, October 2, 2004; Page A16 ROME, Oct. 1 -- For three weeks, Italians across the country marched, held vigils and lit candles, and politicians united to promote freedom for a pair of humanitarian aid workers held captive in Iraq. Only days after the safe return of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, the country and its politicians are divided. The celebration of the "Two Simonas," as the pair came to be known, has been clouded by a wave of recrimination over Italy's participation in the U.S.-led efforts to pacify Iraq.
  Detractors called the women ingrates and accused them of being soft on terrorists. Opposition politicians renewed the debate over whether to press for the withdrawal of Italy's 2,700 troops from Iraq. The criticism began almost immediately upon the arrival of Pari and Torretta in Rome on Tuesday. The pair expressed thanks to a variety of people and groups, including Arab moderates and Muslims. But they failed to single out the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
  Torretta called the interim Iraqi government of Ayad Allawi a "puppet" and said people "have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance." The women worked for A Bridge to Baghdad, a group that has labored in Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of civilians," Torretta added. The pair concluded that their captors were "exponents of moderate Islam" because they "prayed frequently," she said. Such comments enraged Berlusconi supporters. At least 17 Italian soldiers have died in Iraq. "What a shame to see the Two Simonas use their notoriety politically and ask . . . for the withdrawal of troops," said Federico Bricolo, a member of the regionalist Northern League party. He pointed out that the demand was the same made by kidnappers threatening to kill Kenneth Bigley, a British hostage. Italians overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq, but Berlusconi wholeheartedly supported the Bush administration.
• After Iraq, Iran?
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 146, Oct. 1, 2004
• US-bound Britons fly into security revolution
  UK tourists to be photographed and fingerprinted as American authorities extend new airport arrivals procedures to all foreigners Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Thursday September 30, 2004 The Guardian Transatlantic travellers who are fans of TV crime shows can look forward to their own encounter with US law enforcement under new regulations requiring mandatory fingerprinting for foreigners arriving at US airports. From today Britons, along with travellers from western Europe and other countries who for years have enjoyed a relatively uneventful arrival in America, will be subjected to a security regime devised in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terror attacks. On arriving at US airports, Britons, who previously travelled visa-free under a waiver programme, will be photographed at immigration counters and have digital fingerprints taken by sliding their left index finger and then their right into a white plastic scanning device. Britons working in America have been subject to the regulations since January.
  Aside from Britons, the new measures apply to passengers from western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore. Only diplomats, children below the age of 14, and adults over 80 will be exempt.
• No, the Conquistadors Are Not Back. It's Just Wal-Mart.
  By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: September 28, 2004 Henry Romero/Reuters A pyramid at the archaeological site 18 miles from Mexico City. A Wal-Mart subsidiary is building a gigantic store near the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, and a small group is fighting a battle for what it calls Mexico's landscape and culture. AN JUAN DE TEOTIHUACÁN, Mexico, Sept. 21 - The market in this small town is a warren of streets with canopied stalls and battered storefronts, where one can buy everything from fresh avocados to jeans to a vaquero's saddle. As they have for centuries, the merchants here ply their trade midway between the ruins of giant pyramids built by the Maya and the stone steeple of the town's main Catholic church, which Spanish monks founded in 1548. Now another colossus from a different empire is being built in the shadow of the pyramids, a structure some merchants and other townsfolk here say threatens not only their businesses but their heritage. In December, an ugly cinderblock building rising from the earth is to house a sprawling supermarket called Bodega Aurrera, a subsidiary of Wal-Mart of Mexico.
• Outlook: Iraq Endgame
  Michael HirshSenior Editor, Newsweek Monday, September 27, 2004; 11:00 AM What is the American endgame in Iraq? How will the United States measure success? Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh grapples with these questions in an article in Sunday's Outlook section. Hirsh says the Bush administration's ultimate endgame in Iraq once was -- and still is, if judged by rhetoric alone -- to emulate in the heart of the Arab world the amazing post-World War II transformation of Germany in the heart of Europe. But, Hirsh says, there has been a dramatic downshift in U.S. ambitions for Iraq, part of a pattern of gradually lowered expectations dating almost from the beginning of the "postwar" insurgency. The German model has given way to the Afghanistan model and now to a Vietnamization strategy. As Iraq descends further into something resembling chaos, Hirsh says, the United States will be forced to lower its sights again and try to salvage the minimal goals of trying to prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state and haven for terrorists. Meanwhile, for U.S. troops, the strategy is simple: staying alive.
• What Has the U.S. Achieved in Iraq
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 145, Sept. 15, 2004
  (5) The fifth is to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction. It is not only that the Bush regime found no such weapons in Iraq. It is also that the invasion of Iraq may well pull down the last shreds of the nuclear non-proliferation program. Iran and North Korea have obviously speeded up, not slowed down, their efforts. It is now announced that South Korea may be following in their footsteps. And if so, can Japan and Taiwan be far behind? What can the U.S. do? What can the United Nations do? The bluff may well have been called.
• How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
  Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
  Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington Saturday September 25, 2004 The Guardian George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time.
• Twisting Dr. Nuke's Arm
  By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: September 25, 2004 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Bush has been searching vainly for Osama bin Laden for three years now, so I've decided to help him out. I'm traveling through Pakistan and Afghanistan to see whether I can find Osama, bring him back in my luggage and claim that $25 million reward. So for the last few days, I've been peering into mosques and down village wells, even under mullahs' couches. No luck so far, but I did find something almost as interesting. I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2.
  Unless he's pressed hard, Mr. Musharraf won't make Dr. Khan available. Dr. Khan is a Pakistani hero, and there'd be great outrage if so-called Yankee anti-Muslim crusaders were allowed to interrogate him. "There would be a very strong reaction," warned Ghafoor Ahmad, a senator and Islamic politician. An interview with Senator Ahmad is a reminder that the alternatives to Mr. Musharraf could be worse: Mr. Ahmad indignantly told me that Osama had nothing to do with 9/11. He suggested that it might have been a joint operation of the U.S. government and Mossad.
• Guantánamo: America's war on human rights
  David Rose 23 - 9 - 2004
  The experience of the hundreds of men incarcerated on a United States military base on the eastern tip of Cuba contains important truths about the "war on terror", writes David Rose in an exclusive extract from his new book, Guantánamo.
  Running through the entire documentary record of the war on terror is a single theme: the unlimited power of the American president to override treaties, conventions and laws in time of war. How could an American administration have contemplated and executed such actions, and in so doing turn its back on the very philosophies which informed the genesis of the nation? The answer has to be that Guantánamo reflects other battles being fought for the soul and direction of American society, deep conflicts which have been aptly described as a "culture war". This war is between the secular and constitutional principles of the American republic and the Christian authoritarianism of figures like John Ashcroft, William Boykin and George W Bush himself. The latter represent an exceptionalism which for the rest of the world means only the justice of theocratic American might, and which in some senses is a mirror image of the millennarian obscurantism espoused by Osama bin Laden in his mysterious Asian cave.
• Three Years and Counting? How Time Flies
  By MICHAEL NEUMANN September 23, 2004
  Iraq: could the world have conceived, in 1947, that US troops could not hold Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich? That American leaders could only sneak into Germany on furtive, unscheduled peek-a-boo missions? That the American occupation officials, hardly daring to emerge from their fortified ghetto, could not control most of Berlin? Afghanistan: could anyone have imagined an America as feckless in its response to Pearl Harbor as to the even greater humiliation is suffered on September 11th? The very country that was supposed to feel the full weight of American wrath now houses a puppet semi-government which cannot even control its own capital, and a scattering of American troops bring no results other than their own occasional deaths. The United States has fallen far. The inability to see the significance of the change is almost as spectacular as the change itself.
  The tendency to collapse, like the same tendency in Rome, has not been relentless. Carter, Clinton, and Bush the First, whatever their faults, were not idiots, and Bush the First delivered impressive military and diplomatic achievements. But his son, despite occasional flashes of cunning, is an idiot. His neocon advisers are third-raters. His intelligence services know nothing. His Secretary of Defense is an overconfident amateur, who thinks he can root out guerrillas from twenty thousand feet in the air. His army is terribly impressed with its own courage and expertise, but wouldn't dream of incurring losses on the scale its enemies accept as a matter of course, and cannot muster enough troops to attain its objectives in the style to which it has become accustomed
  In fact, the Iraqis and Afghans do a very good job of containing American aggression. It is a safe bet that America will never take on a functioning country not crippled by years of internationally imposed sanctions: the idea that, having been humiliated in Iraq, it could tackle Iran is simply ludicrous. This is not only because of America's own military weakness - the inability to conduct successful military operations, even for pure psychological reasons, is military weakness - but because, since the first Gulf War, there has been a decisive change in the world's willingness to humour American fantasies
• Venezuelan Military Intelligence says overwhelming evidence the CIA planned to bring down Chavez Frias' airplane en route to United Nations in New York
  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias Details behind the sudden decision to cancel President Hugo Chavez Frias' next-week trip to Washington D.C. and New York (to deliver a speech to the United Nations) are being revealed by security services who say they have "overwhelming evidence" of a CIA-backed plan to "bring down" the Chavez Frias' airplane during the scheduled flight to the United States from Caracas.
• Labour must dare to speak for Britain - and Iraq
  Holding Blair to account is not only right, it is in the party's own interests Seumas Milne Thursday September 23, 2004 The Guardian
  The price paid by Britain for Tony Blair's decision to join the invasion of Iraq has until now been relatively low. British casualties have been proportionately fewer than those of the Americans. By occupying the Shia-dominated south, British troops were at least initially spared the scale of guerrilla attacks that greeted US forces from the first days. Few Britons had until this week been caught up in the kidnappings sweeping Iraq and, despite dire government warnings, Britain has so far been spared the kind of revenge attack suffered, for example, by Spain - which Blair was told to expect in intelligence briefings in the run-up to war. Evidence has been piling up of the killing and maltreatment of Iraqis in and out of custody by British troops, whose local reputation for brutality is a far cry from the benign paternalism often hailed in the British media.
  Until last year, the only group in Iraq linked to al-Qaida operated in the US- and British- patrolled Kurdish area, beyond Saddam Hussein's writ. Now every Afghan jihadist veteran who wants to can stage kidnappings and suicide attacks throughout Iraq: this is Tony Blair's "cockpit of international terrorism", conjured into being by his own government.
  By any normal reckoning, the events of the past few days should have triggered a political crisis in Britain. The conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that there were no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion, the leaked Whitehall documents confirming that Blair was warned in advance of the likelihood of post- war chaos and, crucially, the declaration by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, that the war launched by a British prime minister was illegal should be a lethal combination.
• US jet sent 600 miles to keep Cat Stevens away
  Tania Branigan Thursday September 23, 2004 The Guardian American officials diverted a transatlantic flight 600 miles in the belief that the presence of Yusuf Islam, the charity worker and pop star formerly known as Cat Stevens, posed an imminent threat to national security, it emerged yesterday. The 56-year-old singer was escorted off the plane by FBI agents after customs officers realised that his name was on a "watchlist". He was due to be deported to the UK last night after questioning. His 21-year-old daughter was allowed into the US
  United Airlines flight 919 from London to Washington was diverted to Bangor, Maine, on Tuesday night after US customs officers told the TSA that Mr Islam was on board. Airline officials had failed to spot his name earlier.
  It is not clear why officials chose to divert the flight - at substantial cost and delaying other passengers for six hours - rather than detain Mr Islam on his arrival in Washington.
• Inside the ivory tower
  Blogging is allowing academics to develop and share their ideas with an audience beyond the universities. But as Jim McClellan reports, not everyone is convinced Thursday September 23, 2004 The Guardian Creating a blog to track the progress of your PhD thesis might seem like the ultimate delaying tactic - a way to avoid ever actually writing the thing itself. But for Esther MacCallum- Stewart, currently doing a D.Phil thesis on popular culture during the first world war at the University of Sussex, the opposite has been true. She began blogging about her thesis (www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/war/) in February 2002, initially to keep track of the ideas she was developing. "I realised I was making notes all over the place, and they weren't making any sense at all."
• Dyke: Blair's world of 'lies and bullying'
  ·Ex-BBC chief says PM reneged on deal after Hutton report · Governors 'should resign' after bowing to No 10 pressure Kamal Ahmed, political editor Sunday August 29, 2004 The Observer Greg Dyke, former director-general of the BBC, today lays bare the astonishing inside story of the war waged by the Prime Minister and Downing Street against the BBC over its coverage of the Iraq war and the controversial issue of weapons of mass destruction. In an explosive autobiography which returns the corrosive issue of Iraq to the heart of political debate, Dyke reveals that Tony Blair wrote an unprecedented letter to him and Gavyn Davies, the former BBC chairman, trying to force the corporation to change the tone of its coverage.
  The book reveals that the BBC was baffled when Hutton said the government was not guilty of the 'sexing up' claims. Dyke's book quotes a comment by Philip Gould, one of Blair's closest allies and advisers, by way of explanation, alleging that he told a Labour peer: 'Don't worry, we appointed the right judge.'
  'The charge against Blair is damning,' Dyke says. 'He was either incompetent and took Britain to war on a misunderstanding, or he lied when he told the House of Commons that he didn't know what the 45-minute claim meant. 'We were all duped. History will not be on Blair's side, it will show that the whole saga is a great political scandal.' [Media]
• Juggling act
  He's a writer, he's a director, he's an Oscar- winning actor with an Oscar-winning wife. He's also Hollywood's most vociferous anti-war campaigner - a constant thorn in the side of the American Neocons. And now he's bringing his own political satire to the London stage. Andrew Anthony meets the player who refuses to play the game. Sunday August 29, 2004 The Observer At immigration control in Los Angeles airport a couple of weeks ago, I submitted to the bureaucratic ordeal that now routinely greets British visitors to America. When I finally convinced the customs officer that I was not seeking employment, asylum or the destruction of the free world, she asked me who it was I had come to interview. Tim Robbins, I replied. 'But,' she said, a look of bemusement lending sudden animation to her expressionless face, 'he hasn't got a movie coming out.' I told her that I was there to talk to him about a play he had written. 'Right,' she nodded, then supplied a little cautionary advice: 'Just don't be taken in by his politics.' Only in America is it no surprise to find a state official who is aware of a film actor's latest output, and only in America would that actor's political pronouncements inspire that official to issue a warning, almost as a condition of entry. It's hard to overstate the prominence of movie stars in US culture. It's often been said that they are the nearest equivalent to royalty and, as with the royal family here, they can be forgiven almost anything but an opinion.
  As if to prove that he won't be gagged by the threats to his social life, he has written a play called Embedded, a satire which mocks the compliant role of the American media in its coverage of the invasion of Iraq and takes broad aim at sinister forces within the Bush administration.
  He says that the American media coverage was all about 'fear-mongering, propaganda, demonising', and compares its uniformity to Soviet news reporting
• Faltering Bush plays terror card
  Kerry leads in key states as Republicans mass for convention. Paul Harris reports Sunday August 29, 2004 The Observer
  George Bush will take the stage at the Republican convention in New York this week to launch a last desperate fight for the White House. With two months to go, one of the bitterest and tightest elections in American history is now in its final stages.
  In West Virginia it was working. On a high- school football field in the small town of Hedgesville thou sands came to see Bush. There was a buzz of anticipation. This was Bush country. You could see this in the people lining the roads and the yellow ribbons tied to trees. The Hedgesville gathering felt like a revivalist meeting. They came to hear Bush talk of terror and God. 'Morals are the most important way to judge a life. George Bush is a good man,' said Mary Kate Moore, wife of a local church minister.
  This was not a good place to be a Democrat. One man, Glenn Hiller, heckled Bush about jobs and was quickly removed as the audience shouted abuse. Later Hiller was fired from his job.
• Al-Qaida would back Bush, says UK envoy
  Sophie Arie in Rome and Ewen MacAskill Tuesday September 21, 2004 The Guardian The Foreign Office was thrown into turmoil yesterday after the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, described President George Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida". His comment, made at a closed conference of about 100 British and Italian diplomats, politicians and journalists in Tuscany, was leaked to an Italian newspaper, provoking embarrassment in London. According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the US election. The ambassador said they would vote for Mr Kerry but some people would want Mr Bush, not least al-Qaida.
• Iraqis Warn U.S. Plan to Divert Billions to Security Could Cut Off Crucial Services
  By JAMES GLANZ Published: September 21, 2004 Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times Iraqi families paid boys to clean up garbage and sewage in the Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad on Sunday. The Bush administration wants to reduce the budget for Iraqi municipal services and reconstruction. BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 - Iraqi officials in charge of rebuilding their country's shattered and decrepit infrastructure are warning that the Bush administration's plan to divert $3.46 billion from water, sewage, electricity and other reconstruction projects to security could leave many people without the crucial services that generally form the backbone of a stable and functioning democracy. Under the plan, which was proposed last week and would require approval by Congress, the money would pay for training and equipping tens of thousands of additional police officers, border patrol agents and Iraqi national guardsmen in an attempt to restore order to a land where lawlessness and violence have replaced Saddam Hussein's repression since the American-led invasion last year. But the move comes as a grievous disappointment to Iraqi officials who had already seen the billions once promised them tied up for months by American regulations and planning committees, consumed by administrative overhead and set aside for the enormous costs of ensuring safety for the workers and engineers who will actually build the new sewers, water plants and electrical generators. Of the $18.4 billion that Congress approved last fall for Iraq's reconstruction, only about $1 billion has been spent so far.
• The Last Deception
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: September 21, 2004 It's Ayad Allawi week. President Bush, starting with his address at the U.N. today, will try to present Mr. Allawi - a former Baathist who the BBC reports was chosen as prime minister because he was "equally mistrusted by everyone" - as the leader of a sovereign nation on the path to democracy. If the media play along, Mr. Bush may be able to keep the Iraq disaster under wraps for a few more weeks. It may well work. In June, when the United States formally transferred sovereignty to Mr. Allawi's government, the media acted as if this empty gesture marked the end of the war. Even though American casualties continued to rise, stories about Iraq dropped off the evening news and the front pages. This gave the public the impression that things were improving and helped Mr. Bush recover in the polls.
• The spoils of another war
  Five years after Nato's attack on Yugoslavia, its administration in Kosovo is pushing through mass privatisation Neil Clark Tuesday September 21, 2004 The Guardian 'Wars, conflict - it's all business," sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another "liberation" mission. The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors. The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord - which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade. But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a "free-market economy", and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central- southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. "Socially owned enterprises", the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated.
• Portrait of George Bush in '72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time
  By SARA RIMER Published: September 20, 2004
  Mr. Bush, while missing months of the Guard duty that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, was the political director of the Blount campaign, which accused Mr. Sparkman - a hawk on the war - and the national Democrats of supporting "amnesty for all draft dodgers" and of showing "more concern for coddling deserters than for patriotic American young men who have lost their lives in Vietnam." In the last week of the race, the Blount campaign ran a radio advertisement using an edited recording of Mr. Sparkman that made him appear to support forced busing of schoolchildren, which he opposed.
• Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict
  Julian Borger in Washington Saturday September 18, 2004 The Guardian The comprehensive 15-month search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded that the only chemical or biological agents that Saddam Hussein's regime was working on before last year's invasion were small quantities of poisons, most likely for use in assassinations. A draft of the Iraq Survey Group's final report circulating in Washington found no sign of the alleged illegal stockpiles that the US and Britain presented as the justification for going to war, nor did it find any evidence of efforts to reconstitute Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.
• In Stricter Study, U.S. Scales Back Claim on Cuba Arms
  By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: September 18, 2004 ASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - The Bush administration, using stringent standards adopted after the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq, has conducted a new assessment of Cuba's biological weapons capacity and concluded that it is no longer clear that Cuba has an active, offensive bio-weapons program, according to administration officials. The latest assessment contradicts a 1999 National Intelligence Estimate and past statements by top administration officials, some of whom have warned that Cuba may be sharing its weapons capacity with "rogue states" or with terrorists.
• Rocket Fired at Karzai's Helicopter
  Taliban Asserts Responsibility; Afghan President Was Making Campaign Stop By Pamela ConstableWashington Post Foreign Service Friday, September 17, 2004; Page A14 KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 16 -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai escaped an apparent assassination attempt Thursday when a rocket was fired at his helicopter as he was about to land in a provincial capital. The attack caused no injuries or damage, but forced Karzai to cancel his first trip outside Kabul since he began campaigning for presidential elections to be held Oct. 9.
  Security around Karzai, 46, has been extremely tight since he survived an assassination attempt just over two years ago while visiting the southern city of Kandahar
  After that attack, Karzai's Afghan bodyguards were replaced by a U.S. security detail at the Bush administration's insistence, and he has remained largely confined to his heavily guarded palace compound in Kabul
  Karzai was traveling in a U.S. military helicopter for Thursday's trip
• Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan
  Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger in Washington Thursday September 16, 2004 The Guardian The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal. Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: "Yes, if you wish." He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal."
• State Dept. Official Arrested in Inquiry on Taiwan Contact
  By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID E. SANGER Published: September 16, 2004 ASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - A longtime Foreign Service officer at the State Department, who until recently was a ranking official on East Asian affairs, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with concealing a trip to Taiwan, and is suspected of improperly passing documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents, law enforcement and intelligence officials said. The diplomat, Donald W. Keyser, appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Va., and was charged with making a false statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a government background check. A career foreign service officer, Mr. Keyser was a top advisor on China to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell before resigning abruptly several weeks ago in the face of accusations that he had passed information to the Taiwanese, officials said.
  Mr. Keyser was involved, officials say, in the diplomacy to get Taiwan to back down from a confrontational stance against China when Mr. Chen was re-elected in March. He was also a minor player in the diplomacy to get China to back American pressure against North Korea.
• The First Draft of Freedom
  By PAUL WOLFOWITZ Published: September 16, 2004 The trial of one brave journalist in Indonesia has implications far beyond the courtroom in Jakarta. By the time this article appears, the Central Jakarta District Court is supposed to have handed down a verdict in the case of Bambang Harymurti, the chief editor of Tempo, Indonesia's leading newsmagazine, and two of his colleagues.
  In the interest of disclosure, I should say that I have known Mr. Bambang for nearly 20 years. I knew him particularly well in the late 1980's, when I was American ambassador in Jakarta. I know him to be a journalist of enormous integrity, someone who takes seriously his responsibility not only to publish the truth but also not to publish falsehoods. He is also a Muslim who has courageously denounced terrorism and extremism on the editorial pages of his magazine.
• Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row
  Martin Bright Sunday September 12, 2004 The Observer A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo- conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq. Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
• New blow to Blair over Iraq
  Report concludes no WMD as PM completes reshuffle Michael White, Patrick Wintour and Kevin Maguire Friday September 10, 2004 The Guardian Tony Blair will be confronted with a fresh challenge over Iraq within the next two weeks when the long-awaited final report of the Iraq Survey Group concludes there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country at the time of the US-UK invasion. The Guardian has learned that the team of weapons inspectors sent in by Washington and London at the end of the war to comb Iraq will find that though the threat of Saddam Hussein was real, there were no stockpiles.
• The Dishonesty Thing
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: September 10, 2004 It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't. It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.
• Cheney Spits Toads
  By MAUREEN DOWD Published: September 9, 2004 WASHINGTON - George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have always used the president's father as a reverse lodestar. In 1992, the senior Mr. Bush wooed the voters with "Message: I care.'' So this week, Mr. Cheney wooed the voters with, Message: You die.
  Mr. Cheney warns against falling back "into the pre-9/11 mind-set,'' when, in fact, the Bush team's pre-9/11 mind-set was all about being stuck in the cold war and reviving "Star Wars" - which doesn't work and is useless against terrorist tactics. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton. The president shrugged off intelligence briefings with such headlines as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States'' because there was brush to be cleared and unaffordable tax-cutting to be done.
  Why should the same group that managed to paint a flextime guardsman as a heroic commander - and a war hero as a war criminal - bother rebutting or engaging with critics?
• The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence: Comparative Reflections on the Arrogance of Empire
  by Herbert P. Bix In the second year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq many people in the U.S. still cling to a political tradition that confuses actually existing American society "with the ideal society that would fulfill human destiny."1 They tend to think of the United States not as the polyarchy and global empire that it is, but as the incarnation of "freedom and democracy," or at least the closest approximation to the democratic ideal that exists. Whatever their assessment of current U.S. foreign policy, they regard their country as the Promised Land, the embodiment of Western virtue, the deliverer of freedom to oppressed peoples. [Exceptionalism]
• Media View Kitty Kelley's Bush Book With Caution
  By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page C01 It is the book that some Republicans have been worrying about for weeks, filled with lurid allegations by a celebrity biographer whose controversial reputation has only boosted her sales. Kitty Kelley's volume on the Bush family won't be published until next week, but the White House communications director yesterday dismissed the book as "garbage" and a Republican National Committee spokeswoman said journalists should treat it as "fiction." [Media]
• Study into 'spinning' of Iraq war coverage
  Matt Wells, media correspondent Thursday August 26, 2004 The Guardian The influence of the government's media machine on the coverage of the Iraq war is to be examined by academics. Researchers from Liverpool and Leeds universities will analyse the government's "spin" practices, comparing them with what appeared in print and on air during the five weeks of the main conflict. They also hope to interview many of those involved, including journalists, news executives and members of the government and military communications machine. [Media]
• An About-Face on America
  In Arab Eyes, the Former Land of Opportunity Can't Get Much Lower By Philip Kennicott Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page C01 CAIRO -- Whether he's in his 18th-floor office in Cairo's World Trade Center, or at his villa near the Pyramids, lawyer and law professor A. Kamal Aboulmagd moves in very different circles than most Egyptians. In his long and distinguished career, he has held ministerial posts in the Egyptian government, served as an adviser to the crown prince of Kuwait, held innumerable positions on panels and advisory committees, and devoted himself to human rights issues. He has lived in America and waxes poetic about the color of the leaves in autumn. But his opinion of the United States today is not far removed from that of Egyptians of much more modest resources. "He deserves to be in the Guinness Book of World Records," Aboulmagd says of President Bush. "He has changed the minds of the most people, about America, in the shortest period of time. Five years ago, they would say they like America, that it is an open society." But not today, according to Aboulmagd, who bemoans the historically low esteem in which America is held in the Arab world. In Egypt, according to a highly regarded Pew Research Center poll two years ago, only 6 percent of people held a positive view of the United States.
• The warlords of America
  Cover story New Statesman John Pilger Monday 23rd August 2004
  Most of the US's recent wars were launched by Democratic presidents. Why expect better of Kerry? The debate between US liberals and conservatives is a fake; Bush may be the lesser evil. From John Pilger in Washington
• Besieged Al-Sadr keeps grip on shrine
  Iraqi government claims that police had arrested hundreds of the radical cleric's fighters and taken over his headquarters in Najaf could have come from Saddam's Comical Ali, reports Luke Harding Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer Asked how the battle was going, Commander Abu Mohammad Hilu showed off his latest trophy - a blood-drenched American boot. There was a large bullet hole in the middle. 'We found it after last night's battle,' the commander explained. His colleague, Abu Ali, added: 'Originally there was an American foot inside it and a bit of the leg. But we took it out and threw it to the dogs.'
  Over the past 17 days the standoff between Sadr's Shia militia and Iraq's US-backed interim government has been portrayed as a conflict that the renegade cleric will eventually lose. In fact, he is winning.
• Why exams are failing children
  In a frank open letter to Charles Clarke, Colin MacCabe, one of our leading intellectuals and academics, argues that the A-level system undermines British education Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer
• Why America is still fighting the battles of Mekong Delta
  The controversy over John Kerry's Vietnam service masks a deeper argument over political advertising on US television, writes Paul Harris Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer
  To some observers the success of the attempt to question Kerry's record seems amazing. Whatever the details of his record, Kerry volunteered for service in the war and repeatedly risked his life. Meanwhile the Bush family used its connections to secure Bush a coveted Texas-based job in the Air National Guard. Questions remain over whether Bush completed that service. Vice-President Dick Cheney meanwhile got repeated deferments from the Vietnam draft and is on record as saying he had 'other priorities' than military service. But Democratic strategists are haunted by the experience of Kerry's close friend and fellow veteran Max Cleland. Cleland, who appears at many Kerry events, lost three limbs in Vietnam. But in 2002 a Republican campaign successfully unseated him as a senator in Georgia after portraying him as unpatriotic. In the brutal world of American politics the lesson is clear: being a Vietnam hero is no guarantee. The gloves are off.
• 'Death after death, blood after blood'
  Killing goes on despite claims that siege is over Luke Harding inside the Imam Ali shrine, Najaf Saturday August 21, 2004 The Guardian
  Inside the pockmarked entrance of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, there were no police to be seen yesterday afternoon. Supporters of the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al- Sadr loafed on carpets in the pigeon-infested courtyard. A few smoked; others dozed. A couple of young students stood next to a makeshift infirmary; parked nearby was an empty pallet covered in blood. "We haven't given up. This is a lie by the government," said Amar Al-Khaji, a 29-year-old civil engineer from Baghdad. "As you can see, we are still here."
  So, too, is the attempt to portray the battle for the Shias' holiest city as one in which the US military is merely assisting government forces. At the moment, the Americans are doing all the fighting. The Iraqi police play merely a cameo role: a massive convoy rode towards the shrine yesterday, sirens blazing, celebrating a victory that never happened. Two minutes later it turned back.
• The Chávez Victory: A Blow to the Bush Administration
  By JUAN FORERO Published: August 20, 2004 CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 19 - When President Hugo Chávez was ousted in a coup two years ago, the Bush administration celebrated, calling the ouster his own doing. The rest of Latin America was left fuming by the overthrow and expressed strong support for Mr. Chávez as he was almost immediately swept back into power in a popular uprising. On Sunday, when Mr. Chávez triumphed over his adversaries in a referendum on whether he should be recalled from office, countries from Brazil to Argentina, Colombia to Spain heartily congratulated him. The United States remained silent for more than a day, until a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, offered tepid backing for the "preliminary results." The resounding victory was a blow to the Bush administration
• Anti-Americanism a Hit With Egyptian Audiences
  By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, August 20, 2004; Page A01
  In Cairo's entertainment world these days, it's hard to escape a wave of anti-Americanism. Often, a sure way to fill a theater is to lambaste U.S. foreign policy, cultural habits or military activity. One recent comedy lampooning the United States featured an exploding Statue of Liberty outside the lobby. Another stage production included a randy caricature of an American general and played to packed houses for four months. The sentiment driving such works is widespread across the Arab world, a recent poll showed. Ninety-three percent of people surveyed in Jordan in March had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of the United States, according to the study by the Pew Research Center. In Morocco, the figure was 68 percent.
• Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List
  By Sara Kehaulani GooWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 20, 2004; Page A01 U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list.
  A senior administration official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said Kennedy was stopped because the name "T. Kennedy" has been used as an alias by someone on the list of terrorist suspects.
• Microsoft pays dear for insults through ignorance
  Paul Brown, environment correspondent Thursday August 19, 2004 The Guardian Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments
• Ignoring History In Iraq
  By George F. Will Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A19 On Oct. 23, just 10 days before the election, the war in Iraq will have lasted as long as the 584-day U.S. involvement in World War I, from the April 6, 1917, declaration of war to the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice. And probably in late September or early October the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq will pass 1,000. The war already has lasted longer than the Spanish-American War (230 days), and on Dec. 9, 42 days before the next president is inaugurated, the war will be longer than was the war with Mexico (630 days). It will not last as long as the war against Philippine insurgents (4,000 U.S. and 200,000 Philippine dead) that followed U.S. annexation and festered intermittently for 14 years. The annexation was defended in 1901 by the president of Princeton University: "The East is to be opened and transformed, whether we will it or not; the standards of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples who have stood still the centuries through are to be quickened and to be made part of the universal world of commerce and of ideas."
• Bush's Withdrawal From the World
  By Ronald D. Asmus Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A19 Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave. The planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia that President Bush announced this week, if allowed to stand, could lead to the demise of the United States' key alliances across the globe, including the one that Truman considered his greatest foreign policy accomplishment: NATO. The president proposes something that generations of U.S. diplomats and soldiers fought to prevent and that our adversaries sought unsuccessfully to achieve: radical reduction of U.S. political and military influence on the European and Asian continents. The Bush message, delivered at a campaign rally, also smells of political opportunism. Under pressure but unable to withdraw troops from Iraq, the president has instead reached for what his advisers hope is the next best thing politically -- a pledge to bring the boys home from Europe and Asia.
• Dirty politics
  You know the US presidential election is hotting up when the smear campaigns get started John Sutherland Monday August 9, 2004 The Guardian
• Know your Bushisms: part three
  As the leader of the free world inserts his foot once more in his mouth, we invite you again to test your knowledge of Dubya's wit and wisdom. Which of the following phrases did the US president actually utter?
• U.S. to Cut Forces in Europe, Asia
  By Mike Allen and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page A01 President Bush will announce Monday that he plans to pull 70,000 to 100,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the first major reconfiguration of overseas military deployments by the United States since the Cold War ended, White House officials said yesterday. Bush, who will reveal his plan in a speech to the annual convention of the 2.6 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati, plans to say that the change is necessary to adapt the nation's military to the demands of the global war on terrorism and to take advantage of new technologies, said a senior aide involved in developing the plan. Two-thirds of the reduction will come from Europe, most of them Army soldiers in Germany, and most of the troops will be reassigned to bases in the United States, the aide said. Officials said exact details of the moves have not been finalized, but some of the troops from Germany and South Korea will be moved to expansion countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Eastern Europe. The plan is the latest iteration of a discussion that has been going on for several years between the Pentagon and the White House about reconfiguring troops abroad now that the Soviet Union is extinct and the United States is the world's lone superpower. Administration officials have talked for more than two years about their intention to move 60,000 troops out of Europe, mostly from Germany, and 30,000 from East Asia, mostly from Japan and South Korea.
• U.S. Trade Deficit Increased 19% in June
  Analysts Worry That Burgeoning Gap Will Lead to Higher Interest Rates, Lower Dollar By Nell Henderson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page E01 U.S. businesses and consumers spent more in June on imported machinery, clothing, jewelry and other goods and services. Everybody paid more for oil. Meanwhile, U.S. businesses sold far less corn, chemicals, computers and other items overseas. By the end of June, imports exceeded exports by $55.8 billion, another record U.S. trade deficit, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. The size of the gap forced many economists to trash their forecasts and pencil in lower estimates of the economy's strength in coming months.
  The U.S. as a nation is just living way beyond its means," said Nigel Gault, U.S. economist for Global Insight, an economic research firm, noting that household debt has soared in recent years and that the federal budget deficit is ballooning to a record size. "There is a worry that at some point, U.S. spending growth will have to slow sharply to get this under control."
• The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
  Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't Make Front Page By Howard KurtzWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01 Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.
  As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war. [Media]
• Private, Public Roles Overlap in Washington
  Insiders are advising officials and working for businesses that profit from government contracts. It's a growing pattern of networking. By Walter F. Roche Jr., Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON - Suzanne H. Woolsey is a trustee of a little-known defense consulting group that had inside access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war. Last January, she joined the board of California-based Fluor Corp. Soon afterward, Fluor and a joint venture partner won about $1.6 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.
  Her husband, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a leading advocate for the war, is serving as a government policy advisor. He too works for a firm with war-related interests. The Woolseys' overlapping affiliations are part of a growing pattern in Washington in which individuals play key roles in quasi-governmental organizations advising officials on major policy issues but also are involved with private businesses in related fields.
• Woolsey's Web: Structural Corruption & Iraq
  Steve Clemons August 08, 2004
• Why Bush could be a fan of terror
  America won't turn against its President this November, not as long as al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden stay on the front pages Peter Preston Sunday August 8, 2004 The Observer The fattest factor in America's election year hasn't flamed, or even singed, yet. But another hot week of orange alerts, white knuckles and scarlet blushes begins to pose the inevitable awful problem. Who exactly will Osama bin Laden be voting for this November? Is he (whisper it gently) a closet Republican?
  Not all of this should be taken at face value, of course. George Tenet, when he was a revered director of the CIA last year (as opposed to this year's departed stumble bum), cheerfully admitted to Bob Woodward that the agency would make a big noise about tiny scraps of information because it made al-Qaeda think that they knew more than they did. Disinformation was the name of the essential gain - and still is. Feeding four pages of quivering detail to the New York Times last week went far beyond reverence for a free press. Nothing is quite as it seems. The harder the claims, the frailer the handle on truth.
• US troops kill 300 in Najaf raid
  Michael Howard in Baghdad Saturday August 7, 2004 The Guardian American forces said yesterday they had killed at least 300 militia fighters during a ferocious two-day battle in the holy city of Najaf, where US and Iraqi troops continued to fight gunmen loyal to the militant Shia cleric Muqtada al- Sadr.
  Captain Carrie Batson, a marine spokeswoman, said: "We estimate we've killed 300 anti-Iraqi forces in the past two days of fighting." She said three US troops had been killed and 12 wounded. The US-appointed governor of Najaf, Adnan al- Zurfi, later put the death toll at 400 and said 1,000 of Mr Sadr's Al Mahdi militia had been captured. [Media] [Misinterpretation]
• What About Iraq?
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 6, 2004 funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse.
  But we need to move quickly to end our position as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," the fate that none other than former President George H. W. Bush correctly warned could be the result of an invasion of Iraq. And that means turning real power over to Iraqis. Again and again since the early months after the fall of Baghdad - when Paul Bremer III canceled local elections in order to keep the seats warm for our favorite exiles - U.S. officials have passed up the chance to promote credible Iraqi leaders. And each time the remaining choices get worse. Yet we're still doing it. Ayad Allawi is, probably, something of a thug. Still, it's in our interests that he succeed. But when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents - a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet - American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now looks like a puppet. Should we cut and run? No. But we should get realistic, and look in earnest for an exit.
• U.N. Says Iraq Force Is Stalled
  By Colum LynchWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 5, 2004; Page A14 UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 4 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Wednesday that efforts to assemble an international peacekeeping force to protect a future U.N. mission in Iraq have stalled, requiring U.S.-led forces to provide security for the foreseeable future. The Bush administration has promoted the idea of a U.N. protection force as a way of broadening international support for the struggling Iraqi political transition, particularly among countries that are reluctant to serve alongside American troops in Iraq. But senior U.N. officials say the initiative is on the verge of collapse as Iraqi insurgents and militants have stepped up attacks against citizens from countries considering participation, according to senior U.N. officials.
• $1.9 Billion of Iraq's Money Goes to U.S. Contractors
  By Ariana Eunjung ChaWashington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 4, 2004; Page A01 Halliburton Co. and other U.S. contractors are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds under an arrangement set by the U.S.-led occupation authority, according to a review of documents and interviews with government agencies, companies and auditors. Most of the money is for two controversial deals that originally had been financed with money approved by the U.S. Congress, but later shifted to Iraqi funds that were governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight.
• Reading the Script
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 3, 2004 .. A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news. [Media]
• A Primer on U.S. Presidential Elections
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 142, Aug. 1, 2004 One has to ask oneself what it is that made the Democrats show such unity. What is it that holds them together? It is not foreign policy. While the majority of the delegates and of Democratic voters think the war in Iraq was morally and politically wrong, this is not the position of Kerry or his close advisors, nor is this the official position of the Democratic party. Rather, Kerry argues that the war was conducted ineptly
  If the lines are blurred in foreign policy and economic policies, there is one domain in which the lines between the Democratic party and the Republican party today are indeed quite clear. This is the social domain, which has three components: multiculturalism, social liberalism, and the environment
  If the Democratic party wins the elections of 2004, it will be in large part because it has the enthusiastic, even the desperate, support of those who stand for these issues in the social domain. No doubt, it hopes to pick up some undecided voters by its positions on economic issues and another segment who are dismayed at Bush's foreign policies. But the unity of the Democratic party does not lie there. And the changes a Kerry administration would bring will be less notable in foreign policy or economic issues than in this social domain.
• The mask of altruism disguising a colonial war
  Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
  John Laughland Monday August 2, 2004 The Guardian
  If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent - as General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed - and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence. Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he has fought in this, surely one of the most bellicose premierships in history
  Although in each case the pretext for war has been proved false or the war aims have been unfulfilled, a stubborn belief persists in the morality and the effectiveness of attacking other countries
  The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil.
  Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor. [human rights] [double standards]
• Britain's war on drugs is naive, says US
  Policy clashes undermine Blair's pledge to end Afghanistan opium production David Smith in Kabul Sunday August 1, 2004 The Observer The US has blamed Britain's 'lack of urgency' for its failure to arrest the booming opium trade in Afghanistan, exposing a schism between the allies as the country trembles on the brink of anarchy. As a record opium harvest fuels the supply of heroin to Britain's streets, the US embassy in Kabul has revealed policy clashes which undermined Tony Blair's pledge to end Afghan poppy cultivation. 'You guys are here because you have a war on drugs,' one US official told The Observer. 'Less than 5 per cent of all opiates in North America come from Afghanistan; I'm here because we have a war on terror. It does produce slightly different emphases. Britain will achieve the results they want in 10 years and that's fast enough for them. We will achieve the result we want only if we do it more quickly.'
  'Britain's attitude is a little naive. I can name several Afghan government ministers and regional warlords absolutely up to their necks in drugs money. I would not bet on any high profile arrests before the election.' [Drugs] [Double standards]
• Taliban Fighters Increase Attacks
  By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID ROHDE Published: August 1, 2004 WASHINGTON, July 31 - Attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Afghan security forces and civilians have increased steadily in the past several months, posing new hurdles for reconstruction and political stability efforts, American commanders and Afghan officials say.
• Iraqi Security Has Come Far, With Far to Go
  U.S.-Trained Forces Hit by Defections By Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page A18 BAGHDAD -- Five hooded men hopped out of a car at the checkpoint, heavily armed and clearly eager for blood. Iraqi policeman Maytham Talib figured it was time to quit his job. "Each one of them had an automatic weapon. The police, we had four rifles, but only two worked. We had seven bullets for each rifle. We ran," said Talib, 25. He had already seen two colleagues gunned down at a checkpoint and two others slain by a grenade. He fled, took a bus home and has not been back to work since. Established by the U.S. occupation authority and trained by foreign troops, Iraq's police and National Guard have been targets of insurgent attacks for months. With the formal end of U.S. occupation, they have been dying in ever larger numbers -- at least 127 have been killed in the last two months. The danger, coupled with low pay, has caused many to quit. Defections pose a serious obstacle to the rebuilding of Iraq's security forces but not the only one. Planning has been chaotic, units have staged mutinies, and essential equipment has not been delivered. In recent months, the entire process of recruitment and training has been largely scrapped and begun again, and the interim Iraqi government that was installed on June 28 has dictated more changes.
• Anybody but Bush - and then let's get back to work
  With Kerry at the helm, the left might focus on the real issues again Naomi Klein Friday July 30, 2004 The Guardian
  Last month, I reluctantly joined the Anybody But Bush camp. It was "Bush in a Box" that finally got me, a gag gift my brother gave my father on his 66th birthday. Bush in a Box is a cardboard cut-out of President 43 with a set of adhesive speech balloons featuring the usual tired Bushisms: "Is our children learning?" "They misunderestimated me" - standard-issue Bush- bashing schlock, on sale at Wal-Mart, made in Malaysia.
  You know the line: The White House has been hijacked by a shady gang of zealots who are either insane or stupid or both. Vote Kerry and return the country to sanity. But the zealots in Bush's White House are neither insane nor stupid nor particularly shady. Rather, they openly serve the interests of the corporations that put them in office with bloody-minded efficiency
  This madness has to stop, and the fastest way of doing that is to elect John Kerry, not because he will be different but because in most key areas - Iraq, the "war on drugs", Israel/Palestine, free trade, corporate taxes - he will be just as bad. The main difference will be that as Kerry pursues these brutal policies, he will come off as intelligent, sane and blissfully dull. That's why I've joined the Anybody But Bush camp: only with a bore such as Kerry at the helm will we finally be able to put an end to the presidential pathologising and focus on the issues again
• Amazon will not handle book on Bush-Saudi links
  Steven Morris Friday July 30, 2004 The Guardian Amazon.co.uk was last night criticised for refusing to stock a controversial book which examines the links between George Bush's circle and rich Saudis. Major bookstores including Waterstone's and WH Smith are carrying House of Bush, House of Saud, which was published in Britain yesterday after becoming a bestseller in the US. But the book's publisher, Martin Rynja, expressed concern and bemusement that the work by Craig Unger, which inspired some of the more sensational allegations in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, will not be available on the British version of Amazon, the online bookshop.
• Triumph of the Trivial
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 30, 2004 [media]
• Castro blasts Bush on sex charges
  BREAKING WITH tradition, Cuba's maximum leader Fidel Castro turned his traditional July 26 State of the Nation speech into a war of words with President Bush. Castro devoted the bulk of his 90-minute speech to countering charges levied by Mr. Bush that his government fosters tourism prostitution and child pornography. He strongly implied that President Bush cannot distinguish between his imagination and reality. Quoting extensively from the book "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President" by Dr. Justin A. Frank, Castro suggested that Mr. Bush's accusations against Cuba's socialist government may be rooted in his untreated alcoholic past.
  "The dictator welcomes sex tourism," said Mr. Bush as "a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat." The president claimed his recent clampdown on Cuban-American travel to Cuba will not only deprive Fidel Castro of cash but also reduce prostitution. The opinion on the streets of Havana is different. Most don't buy the president's claim that his new Cuba policy is designed to stamp out prostitution. Instead they see it as promoting the breakup of the Cuban family by severely limiting the frequency of visits.
  Mr. Bush told his audience the Cuban leader "bragged" about the sex tourism industry. Quoting Castro, President Bush said, "Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world." Cuba scholars and the press immediately questioned the quote's source. The White House cited a 2001 paper posted on a University of Texas Web site. The Los Angeles Times tracked down the author of that paper, Charles Trumbull, now studying law, to report that he is "annoyed" because Mr. Bush took the 1992 quote out of context and misinterpreted Castro's intent. What Castro actually said is: "There are hookers, but prostitution is not allowed in our country," Castro told a July gathering of Cuba's parliament. "No women are forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily ... We can say that they are highly-educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases." Manuel Hernandez, Cuba's chief AIDS educator, called the charges "absurd." Prostitution, he says, emerged with Cuba's economic crisis in the early 90s. "Prostitution still exists but it is nowhere near as widespread as it was then." Asked if that was because of a drop in tourism, Hernandez answered with a flat no, crediting instead "prevention."
• Sudan: Round Gazillion
  By Stephen Gowans July 27, 2004 The United States and Britain are playing the ethnic cleansing and genocide cards. Again. This time in Sudan.
  And there's China. Dangerously dependent on US controlled sources of oil, it's involved in a consortium developing Sudan's oil. China needs to cultivate sources of supply outside the US orbit.
• Bill Clinton Questions Bush on Iraq War
  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: July 25, 2004 Filed at 11:08 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Former President Clinton is questioning his successor's choices about the war in Iraq. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Clinton called President Bush's doctrine of pre-emption ``a very tricky, slippery slope'' that was ``never realistic because we are not going to go to war with Iran or North Korea.''
• U.S. Using Cash as a Defensive Weapon
  By Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, July 26, 2004; Page A14 TIKRIT, Iraq -- Cash has become the U.S. military's first line of defense in some parts of Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are distributing money to encourage goodwill and to counter their enemies' offers of money to unemployed Iraqis willing to attack Americans, according to officers here. Even patrol leaders now carry envelopes of cash to spend in their areas. The money comes from brigade commanders, who get as much as $50,000 to $100,000 a month to distribute for local rehabilitation and emergency welfare projects through the Commanders Emergency Response Program. There are few restrictions on the expenditures, and officers acknowledge they consider the money another weapon. The targets at which it is aimed are the restless legions of unemployed Iraqi men, many of them former soldiers, policemen and low-level members of the Baath Party of the ousted president, Saddam Hussein. They were put out of work when the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, ordered a de-Baathification of Iraq. U.S. soldiers say those men are vulnerable to entreaties to carry out an attack on the Americans for pay.
  "This is economic warfare," said Lt. Col. Courtney Paul, executive officer of the 1st Infantry's engineer brigade headquartered in Tikrit. "The anti-Iraqi forces are paying $50 to take part in an attack. That's one-third of the monthly pay of an Iraqi National Guardsman." The projects are "never going to get them to love America," said Potterf, the civil affairs officer. "Nobody is going to ever be waving an American flag. But I just want them to be neutral, to stop planting explosives."
• Axis of Evil, Part Two
  By Charles Krauthammer Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A29 Did we invade the wrong country? One of the lessons being drawn from the Sept. 11 report is that Iran was the real threat. It had links to al Qaeda, allowed some of the Sept. 11 hijackers to transit and is today harboring al Qaeda leaders. The Iraq war critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq.
  Two years ago there were five countries supporting terrorism and pursuing these weapons -- two junior-leaguers, Libya and Syria, and the axis-of-evil varsity: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The Bush administration has eliminated two: Iraq, by direct military means, and Libya, by example and intimidation. Syria is weak and deterred by Israel. North Korea, having gone nuclear, is untouchable. That leaves Iran. What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities.
  The country should be ripe for revolution. The regime is detested. But the mullahs are very good at police-state tactics. The long-awaited revolution is not happening. Which makes the question of preemptive attack all the more urgent. Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term. Some Americans wishfully think that the Israelis will do the dirty work for us, as in 1981, when they destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. But for Israel, attacking Iran is a far more difficult proposition. It is farther away. Moreover, detection and antiaircraft technology are far more advanced than they were 20 years ago. There may be no deus ex machina. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the "Great Satan" will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or preemptive strike. Both of which, by the way, are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away -- in Iraq.
• Profits of war
  Halliburton has become a byword for the cosy links between the White House and Texan big business. But how did the company run in the 90s by Dick Cheney secure a deal that guaranteed it millions in profit every time the US military saw action? In this exclusive extract from his new book, Dan Briody reveals how the firm made a killing on the battleground
  Thursday July 22, 2004 The Guardian On January 12 1991, Congress authorised President George HW Bush to engage Iraq in war. Just five days later, Operation Desert Storm commenced in Kuwait. As with the more recent war in the Gulf, it did not take long for the US to claim victory - it was all over by the end of February - but the clean-up would last longer, and was far more expensive than the military action itself. In a senseless act of desperation and defeat, Iraqi troops set fire to more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, resulting in a constant fog of thick, black smoke that turned day into night. It was thought the mess would take no less than five years to clean up, as lakes of oil surrounding each well blazed out of control, making it nearly impossible to approach the burning wells, let alone extinguish them. But with the fighting over, Halliburton angled its way into the clean-up and rebuilding effort that was expected to cost around $200bn (£163bn) over the next 10 years. The company sent 60 men to help with the firefighting effort. Meanwhile, its engineering and construction subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) won an additional $3m contract to assess the damage that the invasion had done to Kuwait's infrastructure - a contract whose value had multiplied seven times by the end of KBR's involvement. More significantly still, KBR won a contract to extract troops from Saudi Arabia after their services were no longer needed in the Gulf. Halliburton was back in the army logistics business in earnest for the first time since Vietnam. The end of the Gulf war saw nothing less than the rebirth of the military outsourcing business.
• The Arabian Candidate
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 20, 2004
  In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover."
  The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.
  O.K., end of conceit. President Bush isn't actually an Al Qaeda mole, with Dick Cheney his controller. Mr. Bush's "war on terror" has, however, played with eerie perfection into Osama bin Laden's hands - while Mr. Bush's supporters, impressed by his tough talk, see him as America's champion against the evildoers. Last week, Republican officials in Kentucky applauded bumper stickers distributed at G.O.P. offices that read, "Kerry is bin Laden's man/Bush is mine." Administration officials haven't gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered a specifics-free warning about a terrorist attack timed to "disrupt our democratic process," many people thought he was implying that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In reality, all infidels probably look alike to the terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in Mr. Bush's record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years.
• Our lies led us into war
  The press must also be held to account for falsehoods we reproduced before the invasion George Monbiot Tuesday July 20, 2004 The Guardian So Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who claimed that the government had sexed up the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was mostly right. Much of the rest of the media, which took the doctored intelligence at face value, was wrong. The reward for getting it right was public immolation and the sack. The punishment for getting it wrong was the usual annual bonus. No government commissions inquiries to discover why reporters reproduce the government's lies. All journalists make mistakes. When deadlines are short and subjects are complicated, we are bound to get some things wrong. But the falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job. [Media]
• PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
  Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Sunday July 18, 2004 The Observer
  Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered. The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves. In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'
• Endgame for king of chess, after 12 years on the run
  Bobby Fischer's flight from US justice ends in Tokyo Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Stephen Moss Saturday July 17, 2004 The Guardian When Bobby Fischer returned to New York after winning the world chess championship in Reykjavik in 1972, he was presented with the keys to the city. Now, after more than 10 years in exile, all the US authorities are offering their wayward son is a prison cell.
  The US government has been trying to corner the chess legend since 1992, when he took part in a match - a rerun of his 1972 clash with the former Russian world champion Boris Spassky - in Yugoslavia in violation of UN sanctions. [human rights]
• 'Mossad agents' jailed in fake New Zealand passport scandal
  David Fickling in Sydney Friday July 16, 2004
• U.S. Works to Sustain Iraq Coalition
  4 Nations Have Left, 4 More Are Getting Ready to Leave International Force By Robin Wright and Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page A01
  The Bush administration faces growing challenges in holding together the 32-nation coalition deployed in Iraq, with four countries already gone, another four due to leave by September and others now making known their intention to wind down or depart before the political transition is complete next year, according to officials from 28 participating countries. The drama over the Filipino hostage in Iraq, which led the Philippines government to say this week that it will pull out before its August mandate expires, is only the latest problem -- and one of the smaller issues -- in U.S. efforts to sustain the 22,000-strong force that, with 140,000 U.S. troops, forms the multinational force trying to stabilize postwar Iraq.
  Norway quietly pulled out its 155 military engineers this month, leaving behind only about 15 personnel to assist a new NATO- coordinated effort to help train and equip Iraqi security forces. New Zealand intends to pull out its 60 engineers by September, while Thailand plans to withdraw its more than 450 troops that same month, barring a last-minute political reversal that Thai officials consider unlikely, say envoys from both countries. "It's 90 percent definite that we're going," a Thai diplomat said.
• Stupid White Movie
  What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire By ROBERT JENSEN
• "Quo Vadis America?"
  Commentary No. 141, July 15, 2004 Immanuel Wallerstein
• Butler provides the props for another great escape
  Simon Hoggart Thursday July 15, 2004 The Guardian Another day, another vindication. No wonder Tony Blair looked cheerful and relaxed. Up before the Spanish inquisition, he'd have said there was no direct evidence of blasphemy, and definitely no intention of blasphemy, so the boys in the black leather hoods would have whisked him off the rack and given him a nice dry sherry. The gist of his statement was, and this is a paraphrase: "I take all the responsibility but none of the blame."
• Sharon tells UN he wants a Middle East free of nuclear arms
  Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Friday July 9, 2004 The Guardian Israel and the UN's nuclear watchdog reached a public understanding yesterday with Ariel Sharon committing himself to the vision of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. Mohammed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, described the development as a "glimmer of hope" for the region, but left aside the sensitive question of Israel's own atomic weapons.
• Fahrenheit 9/11 breaks UK record
  Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent Tuesday July 13, 2004 The Guardian Fahrenheit 9/11, director Michael Moore's unflinching satire on George Bush's administration and the American right, has broken box office records in the UK.
• Greasing up to power
  A US comedian brings us closer to the truth than the BBC. Most of our journalists fail us [Media] George Monbiot Tuesday July 13, 2004 The Guardian When starving people find food, they don't worry too much about the ingredients. Michael Moore's film is crude and sometimes patronising. He puts words into people's mouths. He finishes their sentences for them. At times he is funny and moving, at others clumsy and incoherent. But I was shaken by it, and I applauded at the end. For Fahrenheit 9/11 asks the questions that should have been asked every day for the past four years. The success of his film testifies to the rest of the media's failure
  When most of our journalists fail us, it's hardly surprising that the few who are brave enough to expose the lies of the powerful become heroes, even if their work is pretty coarse. When a scruffy comedian from Michigan can bring us closer to the truth than the BBC, it's time for a serious examination of why news has become the propaganda of the victor.
• Machine at Work
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 13, 2004
  From a business point of view, Enron is a smoking ruin. But there's important evidence in the rubble. If Enron hadn't collapsed, we might still have only circumstantial evidence that energy companies artificially drove up prices during California's electricity crisis. Because of that collapse, we have direct evidence in the form of the now-infamous Enron tapes - although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Justice Department tried to prevent their release. Now, e-mail and other Enron documents are revealing why Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is one of the most powerful men in America.
  The larger picture is this: Mr. DeLay and his fellow hard-liners, whose values are far from the American mainstream, have forged an immensely effective alliance with corporate interests. And they may be just one election away from achieving a long-term lock on power.
• Report Says CIA Distorted Iraq Data
  Senate Panel Cites Exaggerations in Paper Made Public in 2002 By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A01
  In the only comprehensive assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction released to the public before the war, the CIA exaggerated and distorted the evidence it had given Congress just days earlier, according to the Senate intelligence committee's report released last week. The White Paper, released Oct. 4, 2002, and based on a classified assessment given to Congress, was the public's only look at the intelligence that policymakers used to decide whether Iraq posed enough of a threat to warrant immediate military action.
• Must do better
  His poll ratings have slumped and each day brings more bad news from Iraq, but George Bush has one big advantage in the coming campaign: a ponderous, uncharismatic challenger with no clear message. In the first of a series of dispatches for G2 on the US election, former New York Times editor Howell Raines warns that John Kerry must find his voice or fade away Wednesday June 2, 2004 The Guardian A lot of Democrats are nostalgic these days for the exuberance that Bill Clinton exhibited on the campaign trail and for the clarity of his message: "It's the economy, stupid." With John Kerry, the message so far seems to be: It's the war, sort of, and it's the economy, maybe. Even against a weakened George Bush, Kerry has to get better as a candidate
  If John Kerry was ever a populist, George W Bush is a Rhodes scholar. Here's what Kerry has to face up to and build upon. The difference between him and Bush is that Kerry represents the liberal, charitable wing of the Privilege party and George W represents the conservative, greedy wing of the Privilege party.
• British-educated surgeon is new Iraqi prime minister
  Luke Harding and Michael Howard in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington Saturday May 29, 2004 The Guardian A British-educated neurosurgeon who spent 30 years in exile in Britain, and who has close links with both the CIA and MI6, was named as Iraq's new interim prime minister last night.
• Surprising Choice for Premier of Iraq Reflects U.S. Influence
  By WARREN HOGE and STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: May 29, 2004 UNITED NATIONS, May 28 - After turning to the United Nations to shore up its failing effort to fashion a new government in Baghdad, the United States ended up Friday with a choice for prime minister certain to be seen more as an American candidate than one of the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves.
• Catch-22 revisited
  The world has focused on US soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners. But the leaked inquiry reveals incompetence worthy of Joseph Heller's novel David Leigh Friday May 28, 2004 The Guardian The horrors of American military conduct are being documented every day. But one aspect of the leaked US report into prison abuse in Iraq has been little noticed. General Taguba, head of the investigation, painted a picture of an army which can be not only brutal, but is also riddled with incompetence.
  Why are US soldiers of such poor quality? One reason for the alarming level of incompetence appears to be that many officers and foot- soldiers are not professionals. They are two- week-a-year reservists. The 320th military police battalion, at the heart of the abuse scandal, was a reserve unit based near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Karpinski, in charge of the brigade, was a corporate management consultant in civilian life. Phillabaum, in charge of the battalion, was a reservist. The company commander, Captain Donald Reese, who "failed to properly supervise his soldiers", was a salesman. And, as Naomi Klein has pointed out on these pages, many troops were from the poorest parts of rural West Virginia. They had often joined the reserve to pay their way through college, or to get medical care. The present US administration, led by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is trying to exploit these 200,000 army reservists, to get a smaller, lighter, cheaper, full-time army, as well as seeking to privatise many jobs out to commercial firms.
  Like several other Rumsfeldian fantasies, it seems the idea that US neo-imperial soldiering can be conducted painlessly and on a grand scale leads to disaster when it comes into contact with reality on the ground.
• To Tell the Truth
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 28, 2004 Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down. But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.
  And some journalists just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters. Finally, let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers. The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end? [Media]
• The Iranian option
  Anthony Barnett 27 - 5 - 2004
  This is not to predict that America will invade Iran, or permit it to be attacked by Israel. A "cold war" on the regime there could be sufficient. There are even calls for Bush to do a Richard Nixon, turn the tables and send Condoleezza Rice on a dash to Tehran, to transform her boss into an election-winning peacemaker. I'm simply noting that the 'Chalabi scandal' has brought Iran into the centre of things. It has made the question "what should be done about Iran" (as if it was one homogenous thing) part of the ebb and flow of Washington politics. Chalabi didn't conceal that he had Iranian connections. By turning them into a betrayal of the United States, someone in Washington has opened up an Iranian option.
• New York Times admits failures in run-up to war
  Gary Younge in New York Thursday May 27, 2004 The Guardian The New York Times yesterday admitted that its coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war was "not as rigorous as it should have been" and failed to adequately question the credibility of Iraqi defectors or challenge their tales of terror camps and the presence of weapons of mass destruction. [media]
• On New Kissinger Tapes, Crises in White House and the World
  By ELIZABETH BECKER Published: May 27, 2004 Associated Press Henry A. Kissinger, left, and President Richard M. Nixon at the White House in October 1973. WASHINGTON, May 26 - News had just broken of a terrible wrongdoing committed by American soldiers, and the secretary of defense and the national security adviser debated whether there was any way to stop newspapers and television news programs from showing graphic photographs of the victims. "They're pretty terrible," said Melvin R. Laird, the secretary of defense, of the color photographs of the men, women and children killed in the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.
• Gore attacks Bush
  Remarks by Al Gore May 26, 2004 As Prepared George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon. Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins. How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
• The trail to Tehran
  He was Washington's favourite Iraqi, a prized intelligence source and a dream post-Saddam leader. Now his former CIA masters are rubbishing him, saying he helped Iran trick the US into war. No one, says Iraq expert Andrew Cockburn, should be surprised
  Wednesday May 26, 2004 The Guardian In the aftermath of last week's raid by Iraqi's police and US forces on the elegant Baghdad mansion currently inhabited by Ahmad Chalabi (it actually belongs to his sister), his angry spokesman cited as evidence of the intruders' barbarity the fact that they seized "even his holy Koran - his personal holy Koran was taken as a document". If reports that US intelligence has at last woken up to Chalabi's Iranian connection are true, then taking his Koran may have been more than personal spite, since, according to a former close associate, the Pentagon's erstwhile favorite Iraqi owns one bearing an affectionate inscription from the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself, evidence of how deep and long standing a relationship he has had with the Islamic Republic. "Ahmad helped Iran very much during the war [the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s]," recalls this former associate and friend. "Khomeini was very pleased, and he sent him a copy of the Holy Koran inscribed 'To My Son Ahmed.'"
• US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
  · Inquiry into Tehran's role in starting conflict · Top Pentagon ally Chalabi accused Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday May 25, 2004 The Guardian An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday. Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq. According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions. The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands. The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war. "It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
• Bush Sr.'s Iraq-Iran Secrets
  By Robert Parry May 25, 2004 Before the Iraq War spins further out of control, former President George H.W. Bush should sit down his son, George W. Bush, and level with him about the real history of U.S. relations with Iraq, Iran and Israel's Likud Party - even if the father has to admit to illegal and unethical conduct in the process.
  One intelligence source told me that Israel's Likud government had quietly promoted Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress with Washington's influential neoconservatives. That would help explain why the neoconservatives, who share an ideological alliance with the conservative Likud, would embrace and defend Chalabi even as the CIA and the State Department denounced him as a con man. The idea of Israel promoting an Iranian agent also is not far-fetched if one understands the history.
• The Ultimate Insider
  Richard N. Perle's Many Business Ventures Followed His Years as a Defense Official By David S. Hilzenrath Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 24, 2004; Page E01 For longtime Pentagon adviser and boardroom insider Richard N. Perle, the bonus plan at newspaper publisher Hollinger International Inc. was a can't-lose proposition. While Perle was overseeing Hollinger as a member of the board for the past several years, he also was co-chairman of a subsidiary that invested in dot-coms. He participated in a bonus plan that paid executives a share of the profits from successful Internet investments without taking into account losses on failures, the company said in a complaint against its former chief executive, Conrad M. Black, and others filed in federal court in Chicago this month. Perle received $3.1 million in such bonuses from May 2000 to January 2001, the complaint said.
• In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime
  Managing a $13 Billion Budget With No Experience By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01 BAGHDAD -- It was after nightfall when they finally found their offices at Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace -- 11 jet-lagged, sweaty, idealistic volunteers who had come to help Iraq along the road to democracy. When the U.S. government went looking for people to help rebuild Iraq, they had responded to the call. They supported the war effort and President Bush. Many had strong Republican credentials. They were in their twenties or early thirties and had no foreign service experience. On that first day, Oct. 1, they knew so little about how things worked that they waited hours at the airport for a ride that was never coming. They finally discovered the shuttle bus out of the airport but got off at the wrong stop.
• SEXUAL DOMINATION IN UNIFORM: AN AMERICAN VALUE
  By Linda Burnham* Women of Color Resource Center, www.coloredgirls.org The Abu Ghraib portraits of sexual humiliation and submission have exposed the unbelievably tangled strands of racism, misogyny, homophobia, national arrogance and hyper-masculinity that characterize the U.S. military. Militarized sexual domination is neither "contrary to American values" nor simply the work of a few "bad apples." It is, rather, a daily practice
  The world is weary of, and profoundly angered by, America's tattered claim of innocence. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib pulled back the curtain on their perverse enactments so that we may see who we are. Do we have the courage to look? Do we have the will to change?
• Iraqis lose right to sue troops over war crimes
  Military win immunity pledge in deal on UN vote Kamal Ahmed, political editor Sunday May 23, 2004 The Observer British and American troops are to be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq after the crucial 30 June handover, undermining claims that the new Iraqi government will have 'full sovereignty' over the state.
• Bush scourge triumphs at Cannes
  Jason Solomons Sunday May 23, 2004 The Observer Michael Moore's controversial polemic Farenheit 9/11 became the first documentary for nearly 50 years to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival last night. The film, which contains scathing attacks on the business dealings of President George Bush as well as the first footage of American soldiers torturing prisoners in Iraq, beat off competition from more famous directors
• US probes deaths of 37 Afghan and Iraqi detainees
  Paul Harris in New York Sunday May 23, 2004 The Observer American investigators are investigating the deaths of 37 detainees held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged yesterday.
• Bush's super fundraisers join the queue for favours
  Paul Harris investigates the elite network that fills the electoral war chest of the Republicans Sunday May 23, 2004 The Observer The Sun shone on the plush grounds of the Ritz- Carlton Lodge in rolling Georgia countryside. But the resort's four championship golf courses were strangely empty for a pleasant spring weekend. Instead, 300 of America's most powerful men and women sat in a windowless conference room to receive the thanks of their hero: President George Bush.
  But critics question what people who raise half a million dollars for the Republican cause expect in return. The secretive ranks of Pioneers, Rangers and now Super Rangers expose the huge influence of cash on US policy. Many gain positions in government. Their firms win billions of dollars worth of federal contracts. Legislation is shaped to benefit their industries.
  With cash being the key to winning US elections and industries all too keen to use it to exert influence, it seems reform is all but impossible. Certainly Democratic challenger John Kerry, who has raised more than $100m for his own campaign, is unlikely to overhaul the system.
• Regarding the Torture of Others
  By SUSAN SONTAG Published: May 23, 2004 I. For a long time -- at least six decades -- photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now seems probable that the defining association of people everywhere with the war that the United States launched pre-emptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib.
  So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.
• Bay of Goats
  By MAUREEN DOWD Published: May 23, 2004 ASHINGTON So let me get this straight: We ransacked the house of the con man whom we paid millions to feed us fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the case for ransacking the country that the con man assured us would be a cinch to take over because he wanted to run it. And now we're shocked, shocked and awed to discover that a crook is a crook and we have nobody to turn over Iraq to, and the Jordanian embezzler-turned-American puppet-turned-accused Iranian spy is trying to foment even more anger against us and the U.N. officials we've crawled back to for help, anger that may lead to civil war. The party line that Paul Bremer was notified about the raid on Ahmad Chalabi's house after the fact is absurd. The Iraqi police, who can't seem to do anything without us, were just proxies. We were going after the very guy who persuaded us to go after Saddam, the con man the naïve neo-cons cast as de Gaulle; the swindler who sold himself to Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz as Spartacus. One diplomat from the region grimly cited an old Punjabi saying: "It's very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is even worse when she divorces the crook." Mr. Chalabi's wealthy family was swept out of Iraq in a coup in 1958 and he spent much of his life plotting a coup to take back his homeland, a far-fetched scheme that took on life when he hooked up with Mr. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Doug Feith
• The ugly face of power
  One of Colin Powell's aides has shown TV viewers what the Bush administration is really like, says Philip James Friday May 21, 2004 Every once in a while, ordinary voters get a chance to peek behind the curtain that hides the real face of power. Such a moment happened last weekend, during an interview with the secretary of state, Colin Powell, on America's most watched Sunday political talk show, Meet the Press.
• Chalabi Aides Suspected of Spying for Iran
  Raid at Leader's Home Targeted His Associates By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A20 BAGHDAD, May 21 -- Members of the political organization headed by Ahmed Chalabi are suspected of providing information to Iran on U.S. troop positions in Iraq and of kidnapping a prominent physician from his home, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials familiar with three investigations into a group the Bush administration once favored to run postwar Iraq. On Thursday, Iraqi police, backed by U.S. soldiers, raided Chalabi's home and the offices of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of parties that opposed the government of Saddam Hussein. Until recently, the group received $335,000 a month from the Pentagon for help in gathering prewar intelligence about Hussein's government and in finding his top lieutenants after the invasion.
• George Bush never looked into Nick's eyes
  Even more than the murderers who took my son's life, I condemn those who make policies to end lives Michael Berg Friday May 21, 2004 The Guardian My son, Nick, was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know; no, the kindest, gentlest human being I have ever known. He quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun. Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed, and still need, to tell the world about him. People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration,
  We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now. Many have offered to pray for Nick and my family. I appreciate their thoughts, but I ask them to include in their prayers a prayer for peace. And I ask them to do more than pray. I ask them to demand peace now. · Michael Berg is the father of Nick Berg, the US contractor beheaded on video in Iraq this month by a group believed to be linked to al- Qaida. This is an extract from his message of support for the Stop The War Coalition's demonstration, End the Torture - Bring the Troops Home Now, which will be held at 11am tomorrow at the Embankment in London
• 'Gooks' to 'Hajis'
  By BOB HERBERT Published: May 21, 2004 .. The hapless Jeremy Sivits got the headlines yesterday. A mechanic whose job was to service gasoline-powered generators, Specialist Sivits was sentenced to a year in prison and thrown out of the Army for accepting an invitation to take part in the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. But there's another soldier in serious trouble to whom we should be paying even closer attention. His case doesn't just call into question the treatment of prisoners by U.S. forces. It calls into question this entire abominable war. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is a 28-year-old member of the Florida National Guard who served six harrowing months in Iraq, went home to Miami on a furlough last October, and then refused to return to his unit when the furlough ended.
  But the more he thought about the war - including the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, the mistreatment of prisoners (which he personally witnessed), the killing of children, the cruel deaths of American G.I.'s (some of whom are the targets of bounty hunters in search of a reported $2,000 per head), the ineptitude of inexperienced, glory-hunting military officers who at times are needlessly putting U.S. troops in even greater danger, and the growing rage among coalition troops against all Iraqis (known derisively as "hajis," the way the Vietnamese were known as "gooks") - the more he thought about these things, the more he felt that this war could not be justified, and that he could no longer be part of it.
• THE GRAY ZONE
  by SEYMOUR M. HERSH How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. Issue of 2004-05-24 Posted 2004-05-15
• U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure
  Wolfowitz Concedes Errors as Damage Control Continues By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01 The Bush administration is struggling to counter growing sentiment -- among U.S. lawmakers, Iraqis and even some of its own officials -- that the occupation of Iraq is verging on failure, forcing a top Pentagon official yesterday to concede serious mistakes over the past year.
  Under tough questioning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading administration advocate of the Iraq intervention, acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a long occupation. A central flaw in planning, he added, was the premise that U.S. forces would be creating a peace, not fighting a war, after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
• Bullshit aficionados -- meet your champion!
  By Stephen Gowan May 18, 2004
  So, when I read that Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch used the Abu Ghraib prison horror show to wallop countries the US government frequently takes sanctimonious swipes at, I wondered if Bob had read the same, and nodded his head in approval, exclaiming, "That's good bullshit!" Any aficionado of fine bullshit would. I did. If you missed it, don't fret. I've reproduced it below. This is truly gifted. "The biggest victims of this prison abuse scandal are the people in countries like China, Egypt, and Zimbabwe who depend on the United States for their rights. These governments will exploit this and have a ready-made argument to demoralize democracy advocates: 'Even the United States, your biggest champion, abuses people.' [1]" Now that's fine, premium grade, dung. My dog, who has a bit of the coprophilic streak in her, would approve. Notice how Malinowksi has deftly made the real victims of the prison abuse scandal disappear. You'd think the Iraqis who were abused, humiliated, and tortured were the biggest victims, but under Malinowski's expert manipulations the victims of the US government vanish, to be replaced by victims of the Chinese, Egyptian, and Zimbabwean governments. [human rights]
• The Bushes and the Bin Ladens
  : passionate anti- war film is a tale of two families Peter Bradshaw on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 Tuesday May 18, 2004 The Guardian
  Fahrenheit 9/11 cheekily begins with "feed" footage of the major players - Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz - smirking, and preening themselves as they prepare to go on TV. Wolfowitz even has a habit of licking his comb before running it through his hair, which got a deafening "eeeuuuuuwwwww" from the audience. Here they are, is the implication, the whole corrupt gang who fixed the 2000 election, which began when Bush's cousin John Ellis, a Fox News executive, was instrumental in "calling it" for Bush/Cheney on election night and cowed the other networks into joining in.
• The Wastrel Son
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 18, 2004
  He was a stock character in 19th-century fiction: the wastrel son who runs up gambling debts in the belief that his wealthy family, concerned for its prestige, will have no choice but to pay off his creditors. In the novels such characters always come to a bad end. Either they bring ruin to their families, or they eventually find themselves disowned.
  George Bush reminds me of those characters - and not just because of his early career, in which friends of the family repeatedly bailed out his failing business ventures. Now that he sits in the White House, he's still counting on other people to settle his debts - not to protect the reputation of his family, but to protect the reputation of the country.
  So how will it all end? The cries of "stay the course" are getting fainter, while the calls for a quick exit are growing. In other words, it seems increasingly likely that the nation will end up disowning Mr. Bush and his debts. That will mean settling for an outcome in Iraq that, however we spin it, will look a lot like defeat - and the nation's prestige will be damaged by that outcome. But lost prestige is better than ruin.
• When Joseph Comes Marching Home
  In a Western Maryland Town, Ambivalence About the Son Who Blew the Whistle at Abu Ghraib By Hanna Rosin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 17, 2004; Page C01 CORRIGANVILLE, Md. On TV, Spec. Joseph Darby's neighbors here in the Allegheny Mountains have heard him called a hero, a brave soldier who tipped off superiors to the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. And given the way small towns usually honor their soldiers, you might expect preparations for a proper homecoming, maybe even an impromptu parade. But at the bar in the community center just down the road from Darby's house, near the trailer where his mother and younger brother live, none of the handful of patrons is in a parade kind of mood. "If I were [Darby], I'd be sneaking in through the back door at midnight," says Janette Jones, who lives just across the border in Pennsylvania and stopped here at midday with her daughter for a Pepsi and a smoke. What captures their attention this day is not Darby but the ubiquitous photo of another young man, Nicholas Berg, handcuffed and stooped in his orange jumpsuit, moments before he is beheaded by Islamic militants who claimed to be avenging the humiliations suffered by Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. "Maybe if [Darby] hadn't turned them in, that boy would still be alive," Jones says. "Come on, Mom, you can't blame him," says her daughter Janice, giving a friendly shove. "They'd hate us no matter what."
• US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp
  Senator urges action as Briton reveals Guantanamo abuse David Rose and Gaby Hinsliff Sunday May 16, 2004 The Observer
• PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST
  National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122
• Pioneers Fill Campaign War Chest, Then Capitalize
  By Thomas B. Edsall, Sarah Cohen and James V. Grimaldi Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page A01 First of two articles GREENSBORO, Ga. -- Joined by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and a host of celebrities, hundreds of wealthy Republicans gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge here in the first weekend in April, not for a fundraiser but for a celebration of fundraisers. It was billed as an "appreciation weekend," and there was much to appreciate. As Bush "Pioneers" who had raised at least $100,000 each for the president's reelection campaign, or "Rangers" who had raised $200,000 each, the men and women who shot skeet with Cheney, played golf with pros Ben Crenshaw and Fuzzy Zoeller and laughed at the jokes of comedian Dennis Miller are the heart of the most successful political money operation in the nation's history. Since 1998, Bush has raised a record $296.3 million in campaign funds, giving him an overwhelming advantage in running against Vice President Al Gore and now Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). At least a third of the total -- many sources believe more than half -- was raised by 631 people. When four longtime supporters of George W. Bush in 1998 developed a name and a structure for the elite cadre that the then-Texas governor would rely on in his campaign for president, the goal was simple. They wanted to escape the restraints of the public financing system that Congress had hoped would mitigate the influence of money in electing a president. Their way to do it was to create a network of people who could get at least 100 friends, associates or employees to give the maximum individual donation allowed by law to a presidential candidate: $1,000. Of the 246 fundraisers identified by The Post as Pioneers in the 2000 campaign, 104 -- or slightly more than 40 percent -- ended up in a job or an appointment.
• Christian Missionaries Battle For Hearts and Minds in Iraq
  By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page A24 There's no sign on the rickety white storefront in central Baghdad, but for Iraqis who live nearby it is already a familiar landmark. Word spread quickly that those who enter the 1,500- square-foot expanse full of clothes and toiletries donated from overseas can expect to find bargains -- as well as answers to their questions about faith from the Christian staffers manning the counters. "We want to be respectful to the local religion," said the Rev. Sekyu Chang, 45, of Light Global Mission Church in Vienna, who helped set up the charity thrift store. "There is nothing outwardly Christian about the shop, but most of the workers are Christian. They are going to share their personal faith when there are occasions." With a population estimated to be more than 95 percent Muslim and outbreaks of violence in the name of Islam occurring on an almost daily basis, Iraq is not a place where Christian missionaries can openly evangelize on street corners, hold community prayer meetings or hand out stacks of Bibles. Many say they entered the country as businessmen or aid workers, roles that let them establish relationships with Iraqis about something other than religion
• The U.S. and Europe, 1945 to Today
  Immanuel Wallerstein Comment No. 137, May 15, 2004
  Since 1945, a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy has been to keep western Europe as a subordinated, highly integrated part of its geopolitical strategic resources. This was easy to achieve in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Europe was economically exhausted from the effects of the war, and when a majority of its populations, and even more of the political and economic elite, were fearful of Communist forces, both because of Soviet military power and because of the popular strength of western European Communist parties. The U.S. program took the form of Marshall Plan economic assistance for European recovery and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
  And of course, the final "triumph" was the collapse of the U.S.S.R. But this "triumph" did not at all serve U.S. foreign policy interests, least of all in western Europe. For it removed the last major argument as to why western Europe should accept a subordination to U.S. geopolitical "leadership" around the world. A strong autonomous Europe is a first, and essential, building block of a multipolar world. An autonomous Europe that would be willing to work towards a fundamental restructuring of the world-economy in directions that would actually start to overcome the continuing North-South polarization would constitute an even greater change on the world scene. Both are eminently possible. Neither is at all certain.
• Mirror editor sacked over hoax
  Morgan refuses to apologise after Iraqi abuse pictures are shown to be fakes Dan Milmo and Helen Carter Saturday May 15, 2004 The Guardian Piers Morgan was last night sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror as the newspaper apologised "unreservedly" for publishing photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse that were faked.
  It is the latest scalp that the Iraq war has claimed from the British media, after the resignation of the chairman and the director general of the BBC in the wake of the Hutton report. One of the 10 largest shareholders in Trinity Mirror, speaking on condition of anonymity, said last night that company executives had been contacted yesterday morning and told that the photograph scandal was being taken "extremely seriously" by investors. It became clear that Mr Morgan's fate lay in the hands of a small band of US shareholders. Five of the 10 biggest investors in Trinity Mirror - who speak for nearly a third of its shares - are American and it is believed that yesterday at least one was ready to make representations to the board about Mr Morgan's decision to use the pictures. [Media]
• Leaking self-doubt
  by Brendan O'Neill This story, it seems, did not come about as a result of journalists chasing it; rather, it was effectively handed to the media by disgruntled military men. This story, it seems, did not come about as a result of journalists chasing it; rather, it was effectively handed to the media by disgruntled military men. This story, it seems, did not come about as a result of journalists chasing it; rather, it was effectively handed to the media by disgruntled military men. [Media]
• Consumers send 'warning sign' to US brands
  Patrick Barrett Tuesday May 11, 2004 Coca-Cola: among brands to suffer 'erosion of support' Declining respect for American cultural values exacerbated by the crisis in Iraq is having a potentially disastrous effect on the image of US brands such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nike and Microsoft, a new worldwide study of consumer attitudes has found. The number of people who like and use US branded products has fallen significantly over the past year, while brands perceived to be non-American have remained relatively stable.
• What the US papers don't say
  Michael Hann examines the air of secrecy and silence surrounding the US media's treatment of George Bush's 'war on terror' Friday April 30, 2004 American contractors and soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in a prison outside Baghdad? A huge story, by anyone's standards, surely, especially when pictures of the abuse were broadcast on the US TV network CBS. So it was no surprise that newspapers around the world made huge, horrified play of the events at the Abu Ghraib prison. It was more of a surprise, however, that the story did not receive the same level of coverage in the US papers. [Media]
• Just Trust Us
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 11, 2004
  Didn't you know, in your gut, that something like Abu Ghraib would eventually come to light? When the world first learned about the abuse of prisoners, President Bush said that it "does not reflect the nature of the American people." He's right, of course: a great majority of Americans are decent and good. But so are a great majority of people everywhere. If America's record is better than that of most countries - and it is - it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances. Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system.
• Australia's Iraq war catastrophe
  A blistering attack on the Howard government by the former head of Foreign Affairs
  May 8 2004 The occupiers should withdraw, to be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force, writes Richard Woolcott. As the smell of disaster in Iraq spreads it is tempting to say: "I told you so." But it's too serious for that and I take no pleasure from having been right in my judgement nearly two years ago. In two Opinion articles, on August 5 and October 30, 2002, I argued strongly against Australia's involvement in America's planned invasion of Iraq. I had retired as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and my considered views regrettably had no influence on a decided but undisclosed Australian Government policy. The Bush Administration and its handful of real allies on Iraq, including John Howard, are facing a catastrophe, which will tarnish their reputations for integrity and political judgement. Although our forces were too small to make a major contribution, Howard's decision to join this ideological, unnecessary, destructive and costly invasion - now compounded by rhetoric about "staying the course" on a path on which we should never have embarked - will come to be seen as the worst decision in the half century I have been associated with Australian foreign policy.
  Richard Woolcott was secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade during the 1991 Gulf War. He was also a special envoy for John Howard and Alexander Downer in 1996 and a member of the Howard Government's advisory panel for its 1997 white paper on foreign and trade policy
• The worst wing
  Bob Woodward's inside story of the run-up to war in Iraq, Plan of Attack, shows the US capital to be one of the most dysfunctional places on earth, says Jonathan Freedland Saturday May 8, 2004 The Guardian Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward 467pp, Simon & Schuster, £18.99 We have Lord Hutton, the Americans have Bob Woodward. Both get the people who count to talk. While his lordship used the power of judicial summons, Woodward offers a deal. If you talk, he will faithfully present your side of the story. If you do not, your rivals will - and they'll end up looking good, often at your expense. That threat has persuaded Washington power brokers to cooperate on a series of bestselling Woodward books - and now it has worked its magic again to produce Plan of Attack, the inside story of the war against Iraq.
  For the theme that emerges most powerfully from this book is that this war was all but pre-ordained. Even before Bush was inaugurated, Cheney decided that "topic A" of the new president's first national security briefing should be Iraq. On Day 17 of the new administration, the "principals" met to discuss ... Iraq. The "axis of evil", we discover, was always about Iraq: North Korea and Iran were padding to make it look less obvious.
  Publicly Blair insisted he was so passionate about ousting Saddam that he would have pushed for it even if Bush was not keen; yet Woodward quotes a Blair adviser admitting that of the three "axis" powers, the PM regarded Iran and North Korea as the greater threats.
  In Woodward's account, the true special relationship is not with Britain but with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar, is in and out of the Oval Office, granted extraordinary and constant access. Tellingly, he is the only person in the entire volume who talks back to Bush, interrupting him and even taunting him. That Bush takes it, and that Bandar is formally notified of the start of the war before Powell (or Blair), will have many wondering what exactly is the nature of the Saudi hold on the Bush administration. Woodward offers a tantalising clue: "The Saudis hoped to fine-tune oil prices ... to prime the economy for 2004. What was key, Bandar knew, were the economic conditions before a presidential election, not at the moment of the election." In other words, the Saudis were favoured because they were going to rig the global economy to ensure Bush a second term.
  plenty to confirm that the Washington power bubble is one of the most dysfunctional places on earth. Bush goes to bed at 8.45pm; General Franks is at work by 3am; everyone phones every one else at 6am and Colin Powell takes a call from the French foreign minister to discuss the wording of a UN resolution 20 minutes before he is due to walk his daughter down the aisle. It all adds up to a volume as gripping as a bumper episode of The West Wing, with the added advantage that it's all true. Make that a disadvantage: for this book also confirms our worst fears, that the world's hyperpower is in the hands of a dangerous gang - and our own PM is with them every step of the way.
• War and Abuse Do Little to Harm U.S. Brands
  By SIMON ROMERO Published: May 9, 2004 RANKFURT, May 8 - When American troops moved into Iraq last year, European executives at the Ford Motor Company braced for an adverse consumer reaction. "Our sales and image and market share are things we monitor extremely closely," said Niel Golightly, a Ford spokesman in Cologne, Germany. "So the potential fallout risk from Ford being perceived as a symbol of America's foreign policy is something we're always looking at." But aside from a single incident at a dealership in Italy last year, the company has seen no evidence that widespread anti-Americanism abroad has been aimed at the well-known Ford brand. In Europe, Mr. Golightly said, Ford's market share has remained steady, and sales are expected to improve slightly this quarter. And the business outlook remains upbeat despite recent developments in Iraq, including the revelation of photographs depicting the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
• Unit's Role Was to Break Down Prisoners
  Reservist Tells of Orders From Intelligence Officers By Jackie Spinner Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 8, 2004; Page A01 There were no rules, by her account, and there was little training. But the mission was clear. Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer who has been charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.
• Washington the Unaccountable
  By Robert Parry May 7, 2004 What is perhaps most striking about the Iraq debacle - what distinguishes it from almost any other geopolitical disaster in modern history - is the lack of accountability so far from those in government who dreamt up the policies and those in the news media who played along. Throughout American history, leaders who screwed up on the battlefield, in particular, paid with their careers. Abraham Lincoln went through a revolving door of Union commanders who were blamed for the Civil War's early defeats. But now a perverse system of rewards and punishments has taken hold in Washington, protecting those who get it wrong and banishing those who get it right. [media]
• Powell aides go public on rift with Bush
  Chief of staff says secretary of state is fed up with apologising for the administration and is disdainful of 'ideological' hawks Gary Younge in New York Thursday May 6, 2004 The Guardian Colin Powell's key aide has described US sanctions policy against countries such as Pakistan and Cuba as "the dumbest policy on the face of the Earth".
• The past Porton Down can't hide
  As an inquest reopens into the death of a young airman 51 years ago, Rob Evans reveals the secrets of Britain's nerve gas tests [WMD]
• PBS NOVA: Battle Plans Under Fire
  New Weapon Technology Retired Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr. NOVA Guest Wednesday, May 5, 2004; 11:00 AM [Missile defense]
• Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush
  By JIM RUTENBERG Published: May 5, 2004 Associated Press Michael Moore, speaking at a New York conference last month. . WASHINGTON, May 4 - The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday. The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis - including the family of Osama bin Laden - and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
• Battlefield of Dreams
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 4, 2004 Last November the top economist at the Heritage Foundation was very optimistic about Iraq, saying Paul Bremer had just replaced "Saddam's soak-the-rich tax system" with a flat tax. "Few Americans would want to trade places with the people of Iraq," wrote the economist, Daniel Mitchell. "But come tax time next April, they may begin to wonder who's better off." Even when he wrote that, the insurgency in Iraq was visibly boiling over; by "tax time" last month, the situation was truly desperate. Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization - dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities - undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.
  You may ask whether our leaders' drive to privatize reflects a sincere conservative ideology, or a desire to enrich their friends. Probably both. But before Iraq, privatization that rewarded campaign contributors was a politically smart move, even if it was a net loss for the taxpayers. In Iraq, however, reality does matter. And thanks to the ideologues who dictated our policy over the past year, reality looks pretty grim.
• U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
  By WILLIAM J. BROAD Published: May 3, 2004 The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals. Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life.
  China, said Martin Blume, the journals' editor, has surged ahead by submitting more than 1,000 papers a year. "Other scientific publishers are seeing the same kind of thing," he added. Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States, powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated the awards. But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
• Our daily bread
  A simple, wholesome staple or a fat-laden, over- processed health hazard? In the second extract from her book on what really goes into our food, Felicity Lawrence exposes the truth behind the humble loaf Monday May 3, 2004 The Guardian
• God save America ...
  The race for the White House will be decided by fundagelicals. That's good news for twice-born George Bush John Sutherland Monday May 3, 2004 The Guardian The word "fundagelism" has never appeared in the columns of this newspaper. The term is, however, current in the blogosphere - that cyberforum which nowadays carries the most interestingly paranoid political debate. "Fundagelism" is not a word that trips easily off the tongue. It's a crunching together of the even more mouth- boggling compound "fundamentalist evangelism". George W Bush is a fundagelist. Dad wasn't. George H Bush (not renowned for his Wildean wit) delivered his most memorable wisecrack on walking into a room full of fundagelists: "Gee! I'm the only person here that's only been born once."
• U.S. Withdrawal?
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 136, May 1, 2004
• The time a land forgot
  Was Roger Bannister the first man to run a mile in under four minutes or was he just the first amateur, asks one of Britain's top sports historians Peter Radford Sunday May 2, 2004 The Observer
  Before the Amateur Athletic Association became the controlling force of athletics in 1880, men and women of all social classes ran for money on the streets and on the moors and greens of England. Later, the sport was policed to eliminate the undesirables who ran for money, or whose jobs tainted them and rendered them 'professionals'. They also excluded women. The new political correctness also caused writers to airbrush out the professionals of the past and to start a new page of athletics. For them the sport began in Exeter College, Oxford in 1850, untainted by the runners who had run for money for at least 200 years previously.
• The war of the words
  Terry Jones Friday April 30, 2004 The Guardian
  One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else. In the second world war we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like.
  However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable. The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else.
  Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.
• In Front of Your Nose
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 30, 2004
  We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." That's from George Orwell's 1946 essay "In Front of Your Nose." It seems especially relevant right now, as we survey the wreckage of America's Iraq adventure.
• We have to kick against the pricks
  Britain must lose its reluctance to question the special relationship Charles Wheeler Wednesday April 28, 2004 The Guardian The curiously outspoken letter to Tony Blair from 52 eminent diplomats is undeniably a blockbuster. These are men and women who have risen to the peak of their profession by keeping their doubts about the policies of their political masters to themselves, or at least confined to a very tight circle. But powerful though it is, their open letter is no more than a contribution to a debate that is well underway. To this spectator they haven't gone far enough. The issue we ought to be debating is not just British policy in the Middle East, but our close association with the US. The special relationship has been the foundation of Britain's foreign policy for too long.
• Stream of abuse by Express owner provokes walkout
  Lisa O'Carroll, Nicholas Watt and Matt Wells Friday April 23, 2004 The Guardian Richard Desmond, the proprietor of the Daily Express, launched an extraordinary tirade against the Germans yesterday when he accused them all of being Nazis as he goosestepped around a boardroom to the astonishment of fellow newspaper executives. In a performance more akin to Basil Fawlty than one of the most powerful figures in the British media, Mr Desmond began a high-level business meeting with his counterparts from the Daily Telegraph by hurling a string of abuse at them.
• Flight from the fight
  Two American soldiers have deserted, claiming asylum in Canada rather than serve in Iraq. They argue that the war is illegal under international law Anne McIlroy Tuesday April 13, 2004 The Guardian
• Invade Iraq? It's a no brainer
  Terry Jones on what makes our leaders tick Monday April 19, 2004 The Guardian
  Everyone agrees that President George Bush's lobotomy has been a tremendous success. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, declared that he was fully satisfied with it from his point of view. "Without the lobotomy," Mr Cheney told the American Academy of Neurology, "it might have proved difficult to persuade the president to start wars all around the world without any good pretext. But the removal of those parts of the brain associated with understanding the outcome of one's actions has enabled the president to function fully and without hesitation. Even when it is clear that disaster is around the corner, as it is currently in Iraq, the chief executive is able to go on TV and announce that everything is on course and that he has no intention of changing tactics that have already proved disastrous. "I would like to commend the surgeons, nurses and all involved with the operation," said Mr Cheney.
• Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel
  Bush's press conference shows just how ill- informed he is about Iraq Sidney Blumenthal Thursday April 15, 2004 The Guardian On April 21 1961, President Kennedy held a press conference to answer questions on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles that he had approved. "There's an old saying," he said, "that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan ... I am the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious." On Wednesday, President Bush held only his third press conference and was asked three times whether he accepted responsibility for failing to act on warning before September 11. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't [sic] yet," he said. "I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here and maybe I'm not quick - as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
• What Went Wrong?
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 23, 2004 n April 11 of last year, just after U.S. forces took Baghdad, I warned that the Bush administration had a "pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect," and that the same was likely to happen in Iraq. I'm sorry to say those worries proved justified.
  Last month Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, told the BBC that he was sacked in part because he wanted to hold quick elections. His superiors wanted to privatize Iraqi industries first - as part of a plan that, according to Mr. Garner, was drawn up in late 2001
• Give that woman a medal
  The PA who liberated millions from her super- rich bosses was simply doing her bit for the economy Richard Adams Thursday April 22, 2004 The Guardian Joyti De-Laurey will shortly be sentenced for stealing several million pounds from some City squillionaires. But if there was any justice in this world, Joyti would not only be a free woman, she'd be given a medal for services to the community.
• Candidate to Stay in Race Despite Photos
  Tuesday April 6, 2004 9:16 PM FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - A candidate for the Texas House rejected calls to withdraw from the race after photos of him in women's clothing began circulating.
• Iran 'Will Be Dealt With,' Bush Says
  Bid to Start at U.N., President Says By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 22, 2004; Page A06 President Bush told newspaper editors in Washington yesterday that Iran "will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations" if it does not stop developing nuclear weapons and begin total cooperation with international inspectors.
• Interview with former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke
  Transcript: CNN's 'Late Edition' FDCH E-Media Sunday, March 28, 2004; 10:53 PM Following is the transcript of CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday.
  SPEAKERS: Host Judy Woodruff, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, 9/11 Commission co-chair Thomas Kean, 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, Rep. Christopher Shays (R- Conn.) 9/11 widower Stephen Push and 9/11 victim's daughter Carie Lemack. And based on that level of problem, Clinton authorized the unprecedented assassination of bin Laden and his top lieutenants, and he fired cruise missiles at him, and he launched a major covert action program.
  It is. And also, you know, having ads, when you're running for reelection with pictures of the World Trade Center is also problematic, and I understand that. I've talked to the families. I was very moved in discussions with the families. I asked for their forgiveness, and several of them came up to me and said, "I forgive you, I forgive you." And that meant a lot to me. I intended all along to make substantial donations from the profits of this book. I'm now being told that there are people in the White House who are trying to destroy me personally, people who are saying, "Dick Clarke will never make another dime in this city." So I have to take that into account too, that there's this personal vendetta and destruction machine that's aimed at destroying the rest of my life.
  You know, we have Libya, which has now basically thrown up its arms and saying, "We're out of the terror game. We're now cooperating." We have North Korea, which is now going back to the negotiating table. We have Iran, which is now dealing finally with international inspectors and its nuclear program. Those are tangible improvements I think the Bush administration can cite.
  BROWNSTEIN: Very quickly, I think that is obviously key. I mean, look, presidential elections with an incumbent president are a referendum on the performance of the president. Right now, he's right on the bubble, Judy. He has about 50 percent in approval rating. What's holding him down is concern about the economy and other sort of bread-and-butter issues like health care. Terrorism, as I said, has been a great strength, the one asset he's had.
  CLARKE: We had a window after 9/11 when we could have changed opinion in the Islamic world. Opinion could have been moved away from the radical agenda, because a lot of people in the Islamic world were horrified by what happened on 9/11. We had the window of opportunity. We blew that window of opportunity by invading Iraq. This is about not just arresting and killing terrorists, because you can never catch them all. It's about winning the hearts and minds of the Islamic world. And that's how we defeat terrorism, in addition to the military steps and the law-enforcement steps.
  Now that we're in Iraq, having invaded a country that was not threatening us in any way, 90 percent of the population in most of the Arab and Islamic countries hates the United States. So we now have a much higher hurdle to mount to win the war on terrorism.
• Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war
  · Decision came nine days after 9/11 · Ex-ambassador reveals discussion David Rose Sunday April 4, 2004 The Observer
  Details of this extraordinary conversation will be published this week in a 25,000-word article on the path to war with Iraq in the May issue of the American magazine Vanity Fair. It provides new corroboration of the claims made last month in a book by Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, that Bush was 'obsessed' with Iraq as his principal target after 9/11. But the implications for Blair may be still more explosive. The discussion implies that, even before the bombing of Afghanistan, Blair already knew that the US intended to attack Saddam next, although he continued to insist in public that 'no decisions had been taken' until almost the moment that the invasion began in March 2003.
• U.S. Will Fingerprint 13 Million More in Fall
  Visitors From Close Allies To Be Photographed, Too By Christopher Lee and Sara Kehaulani Goo_ Washington Post Staff Writers_ Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A01 Millions of visitors from some of the United States' closest allies soon will have to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the country, U.S. officials said yesterday. If Congress does not extend the passport deadline, and the countries have not developed the biometric passports, air travel would essentially be halted between the United States and some of its biggest, long- standing allies.
• Tolerating Casualties, From the Top Down
  By Lawrence F. Kaplan Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A23
• The Curtain That Just Won't Wash
• In a Gypsy Village's Fate, An Image of Iraq's Future
  Raid by Cleric's Militia Went Unchallenged, Witnesses Say By Anthony Shadid Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A18 QAWLIYA, Iraq -- No one lives here anymore. A month ago, Qawliya's collection of perhaps 150 homes in southern Iraq contained a small red- light district, an isolated warren known for prostitution and gunrunning and as a haven from the law. Today, it is destroyed, the few sounds of life made by barking dogs and scavengers piling bricks from razed homes. Its residents -- hundreds of men, women and children, mostly members of Iraq's tiny Gypsy minority -- were driven out by a militia controlled by a militant Shiite Muslim cleric, residents and police say. Neighbors systematically looted it. Some accounts say the village was burned, though the militia denies it. No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya's residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.
• Powell Expresses Doubts About Basis for Iraqi Weapons Claim
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A19 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell voiced new doubt yesterday on the administration's assertions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying the description in his U.N. presentation of mobile biological weapons laboratories appears to have been based on faulty sources.
  Powell, describing the mobile labs as "the most dramatic" element of his Feb. 5, 2003, speech before the U.N. Security Council, said he hoped the recently appointed commission to examine prewar claims of Iraqi weapons "will look into these matters to see whether or not the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence . . . placed in the intelligence at that time." He also said he has spoken to CIA officials about how suspect information ended up in his speech.
  "Now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid," Powell said yesterday. "But at the time I was preparing that presentation it was presented to me as being solid
• Smear Without Fear
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: April 2, 2004 Instead, Mr. Wilkinson seems to have questioned Mr. Clarke's sanity, saying: "He sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden, and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of `X-Files' stuff." Really? On Page 246 of "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke bemoans the way the invasion of Iraq, in his view, played right into the hands of Al Qaeda: "Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed. . . . It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush." That's not " `X-Files' stuff": it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is. Mr. Blitzer should be telling Mr. Wilkinson to apologize, not rerunning those comments in his own defense.
• Fickle, Bitter, and Dangerous
  An interview with Chalmers Johnson by David Ross and Chalmers Johnson; April 01, 2004
  DR: What are some instances of past blowback and possible future blowback against the U.S? Chalmers Johnson: First of all, I think the obvious thing right now is our mistaken reaction to 9-11. It became almost taboo in this country after 9-11 to even ask what the motives of the attackers were. The public has now been so confused by lies from our government that they believe Saddam Hussein was the one behind it. Of course, we know he wasn't, and since there is no evidence that he could have been, the people have gotten that idea only from listening to the disinformation that comes from the White House and the Pentagon. September 11th was not an attack on America's values or America's democracy or America's wealth. It was an attack on American foreign policy
• Spain, Europe, and Mr. Bush
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 134, April 1, 2004
• Americans burned and mutilated by Iraq mob
  Rory McCarthy in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington Thursday April 1, 2004 The Guardian The Bush administration last night condemned as "despicable" the killing of four American civilians working in Iraq, whose charred and mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets in front of a cheering crowd. Fearful that the incident in Falluja would draw comparisons with notorious images from Somalia in 1993, when the bodies of American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, the White House vowed that there would be no u- turn in policy
• Georgia on their mind
  John Laughland in Batumi Thursday April 1, 2004 The Guardian In 1918, when Lord Balfour was foreign secretary, he said: "The only thing which interests me in the Caucasus is the railway line which delivers oil from Baku to Batumi. The natives can cut each other to pieces for all I care." Little has changed in world geopolitics since the end of the first world war, when the Black Sea port of Batumi in Georgia was briefly under British rule. Although an oil pipeline from Baku to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey is planned, it will take years to complete. When it is built, it will deliver oil exclusively to the American market
  her husband aspires to follow in the long tradition of strong Georgian leaders "like Stalin and Beria".
  As we know from Tony Blair's visit to Libya, the west is happy to make alliances with dictatorships if strategic interests dictate. Georgia certainly qualifies on that score.
• We can win a peaceful world!
  John Pilger
  Let us be clear on the facts of what happened one year ago on March 20. The United States, aided by Britain and Australia, attacked a sovereign country, unprovoked, and in breach of the most basic principles of international law. By the most conservative estimates, up to 55,000 people were killed, including at least 10,000 civilians, a figure confirmed this week by Amnesty International.
• Bush, the Saudi billionaire and the Islamists: the story a British firm is afraid to publish
  Publication of book cancelled as libel laws blamed for stifling free speech David Leigh Wednesday March 31, 2004 The Guardian A book investigating links between rich Saudis and US politicians has been suppressed by the giant publishing firm Random House because, it says, of growing "libel tourism" by wealthy foreigners, and exorbitant legal "success fees".
• 'He is not guilty and he is not innocent'
  When Guantánamo chaplain Captain James Yee was arrested allegedly with secret documents about the prison, he was threatened with execution and branded a traitor. So why after 200 days in jail was he only charged with adultery and quietly released? Oliver Burkeman on a strange and troubling tale from the new American era of homeland security Tuesday March 30, 2004 The Guardian
• This Isn't America
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: March 30, 2004
  Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack." So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power
• Conflict Ends in Pakistani Tribal Lands
  Militants Release 14 Hostages; Criticism of Government Operation Widens By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, March 29, 2004; Page A14 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 28 -- A deadly, 12- day confrontation between government troops and Islamic fighters in a remote tribal region reached a peaceful settlement Sunday after the militants released 12 paramilitary fighters and two civilian officials held hostage for more than a week and soldiers began pulling out of the area.
  But there is a competing public perception that Musharraf has bowed to U.S. pressure at the expense of Pakistan's political and religious sovereignty. Azizuddin Ahmad, a columnist for the Nation newspaper, wrote Thursday that the government was being pushed to produce a "dazzling achievement," such as capturing Osama bin Laden or another senior al Qaeda leader, to help President Bush win reelection, "irrespective of the price our citizens have to pay."
• G.I.'s Padlock Baghdad Paper Accused of Lies
  By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN Published: March 29, 2004 AGHDAD, Iraq, March 28 - American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence. Thousands of outraged Iraqis protested the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel toward the United States a year after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. "No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" screamed protesters who hoisted banners and shook clenched fists in a hastily organized rally against the closing of the newspaper, Al Hawza, a radical Shiite weekly
• Bush & the L-Word
  By Nat Parry March 29, 2004 But the story didn't switch into high gear until the right-wing Washington Times, controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, blared the results of its investigation of Kerry's remarks across the front page of its March 12 issue. Though it's been well known for more than a year that many foreign leaders are troubled by Bush's unilateral foreign policy, the Washington Times acted like Kerry's claim was so strange that it merited some major sleuthing.
  Vice President Dick Cheney added even uglier implications that Kerry may have engaged in acts close to treason. "We have a right to know what he is saying to them that makes them so supportive of his candidacy," Cheney said. Rev. Moon's Washington Times also kept stirring the pot. On March 16, it quoted Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., as saying "I think there's a real question as to whether or not the claim was a fabrication."
• Georgians Watch Anxiously as New Leader Tests His Power
  By SETH MYDANS Published: March 28, 2004 BILISI, Georgia, March 22 - It is democracy in a china shop - aggressive televised arrests, new limitations on the press, a rushed constitutional amendment to concentrate presidential power, a headlong confrontation with a rebellious local strongman. Two months into his term, Georgia's new democratically elected president, Mikhail Saakashvili, is bulling ahead with all the energy that drove out his predecessor, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, in a popular uprising in November. His supporters in the United States and Europe, who are heavily financing his government and have a stake in its success, are crossing their fingers that he will not push things too far. Human rights groups have begun to warn of a tendency toward one-man rule.
  The United States is heavily invested in Georgia because of its strategic location on Russia's southern border and because of a major oil pipeline that crosses its territory and is scheduled to open next year.
  The strong-arm tactics and emerging reports of torture have drawn criticism from local and foreign human rights groups. Critics also say the government seems to be picking and choosing its targets, sometimes for political reasons. The president says he is sending a message. "The era of Shevardnadze, when lawlessness reigned, is over," he said. "If anyone thinks that I am joking, they are mistaken."
• QUESTIONS FOR HANS BLIX
  What Weapons? Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: March 28, 2004
  Your new book, ''Disarming Iraq,'' recounts your futile search for weapons as the former chief United Nations weapons inspector. Yes, President Bush and Tony Blair were convinced there was something there. They were convinced there were witches. You yourself initially believed there were weapons! Only later did you change your mind. Yes, I, too, believed there were weapons. I began to be skeptical when we went to sites that were given to us by U.S. intelligence and we found nothing. They said this is the best intelligence we have, and I said, if this is the best, what is the rest?
  What was Bush like? He made on me a boyish impression. He was agile, moving, moving in the chair, especially compared to Cheney. Who, I suppose, seems more wooden. Yes, the rumors that Cheney is alive are somewhat exaggerated. It's Mark Twain in reverse
• The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
  Colonel Gadafy is just the latest beneficiary of a cynical strategy Michael Meacher Saturday March 27, 2004
• FORTRESS BUSH
  by KEN AULETTA How the White House keeps the press under control. Issue of 2004-01-19 Posted 2004-01-12 Bush's relations with the press are, at once, distant, friendly, and prickly. Many reporters like Bush personally; he gives some of them nicknames (he calls David Gregory, of NBC, "Stretch," and Bill Sammon, of the Washington Times,"Super Stretch"); and, especially during the 2000 campaign, reporters felt comfortable around the jocular candidate. Yet Bush, like many conservatives, also believes that the press is dominated by left-leaning men and women, and that their biases affect their reporting. And, more than any President in recent memory, Bush is uneasy in the spotlight-especially in front of television cameras. When he lacks a prepared script, that discomfort creates a kind of tension that has nothing to do with ideology or personal rapport
  Later, Bartlett said, "Some of the best moments the President has had have been unscripted"-such as when he stood at the site of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn and declared, "I hear you!," or on the few occasions on Air Force One when he invited pool reporters to join him in his conference room and, reporters say, impressed them with his grasp of policies affecting the Middle East, North Korea, and even Iraq. [media]
• Drenched by doubts
  Todd Gitlin 24 - 3 - 2004 The Bush White House is facing an ever-growing credibility gap. From Vietnam to 9/11, the President's stories just don't add up. The press is starting to pick up the scent, says Todd Gitlin.
  The journalist Jack Newfield aptly wrote years ago that Washington likes its journalists to be "stenographers with amnesia". [Media]
• Kerry vs. Kerry-lite
  By Stephen Gowans March 23, 2004
• Catch Us If You Can
  by P.M. Carpenter March 22, 2004
  As the violent anniversary of "Objective: Peace" approached, the Bush administration's smidgeon-of-truth squad fanned out on Sunday morning talk shows in a Goebbelsesque enterprise of on-demand revisionism and shock-and-awe chutzpah. For students of official disinformation and sundry other forms of propagandistic distortion, these interchangeable senior operatives were a marvel to watch.
  Rather than speak in the certainty of the present tense, as he always did in prewar dog-and-pony shows, Powell let loose a torrent of the verbial subjunctive: "I believe the possibility of a terrorist nexus between Saddam Hussein and the weapons that he had the capability of producing or might have had and terrorist organizations that might have gotten access to those weapons, that's been broken up." A fictional possibility, absent capability and imagined access -- all had "been broken up." Powell slithered from the wholly hypothetical to the victoriously concrete without breaking a sweat, or a snicker.
• LIFTING THE SHROUD
  By PAUL KRUGMAN March 23, 2004 From the day it took office, U.S. News & World Report wrote a few months ago, the Bush administration "dropped a shroud of secrecy" over the federal government. After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no limits - Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions. But something remarkable has been happening lately: more and more insiders are finding the courage to reveal the truth on issues ranging from mercury pollution - yes, Virginia, polluters do write the regulations these days, and never mind the science - to the war on terror.
• Israel assassinates Hamas leader
  · Yassin killed in missile strike · Mass protests by Palestinians · Militants vow revenge attacks George Wright and agencies Monday March 22, 2004 Palestinian militants today warned of swift and bloody retaliation against Israel after it "opened the gates of hell" by assassinating Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of militant group Hamas. Yassin was killed in a missile strike by Israeli helicopters as he left a mosque in Gaza city at dawn...//..Yassin, who used a wheelchair, was said to have been directly hit by the first missile, leaving his body severely disfigured.
  In London, prime minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "What has happened this morning is clearly a setback. There is no point pretending otherwise. It goes without saying that the prime minister also condemns today's killing."
  Condoleezza Rice said the United States did not have advance warning of the assassination. She said: "It is very important that everyone step back now and try now to be calm in the region. There is always a possibility of a better day in the Middle East." [Terrorism]
• Wolfowitz on Iraq
  Jim Lehrer speaks with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about progress in restoring security and stability to postwar Iraq after almost a year of American occupation.
• Transcript: Bush Speaks on Iraq Anniversary
  FDCH E-Media Friday, March 19, 2004; 11:44 AM President Bush spoke in the East Room today, marking the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
• Galloway wins damages for Saddam slur
  John Plunkett Friday March 19, 2004 Galloway: says he is the victim of a political smear campaign A US newspaper has apologised and will pay damages to MP George Galloway over wrongful allegations that he was paid millions of pounds by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Christian Science Monitor accused Mr Galloway of accepting payments totalling $10m in return for promoting Saddam's interests in the west. Mr Galloway said today's apology in London's high court was a "complete vindication" after it was revealed the documents on which the stories were based were forgeries.
• TAKEN FOR A RIDE
  By PAUL KRUGMAN March 19, 2004 Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." So George Bush declared on Sept. 20, 2001. But what was he saying? Surely he didn't mean that everyone was obliged to support all of his policies, that if you opposed him on anything you were aiding terrorists. Now we know that he meant just that. A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead. Most Americans, I suspect, still don't realize how badly this apparent exploitation of the world's good will - and the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction - damaged our credibility. They imagine that only the dastardly French, and now maybe the cowardly Spaniards, doubt our word. But yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse, the president of Poland - which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq - had this to say: "That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
  For these denunciations of Spain, while counterproductive when viewed as foreign policy, serve a crucial domestic purpose: they help re-establish the political climate the Bush administration prefers, in which anyone who opposes any administration policy can be accused of undermining the fight against terrorism.
  But the bigger point is this: in the Bush vision, it was never legitimate to challenge any piece of the administration's policy on Iraq. Before the war, it was your patriotic duty to trust the president's assertions about the case for war. Once we went in and those assertions proved utterly false, it became your patriotic duty to support the troops - a phrase that, to the administration, always means supporting the president. At no point has it been legitimate to hold Mr. Bush accountable. And that's the way he wants it.
• United for Peace and Justice
  US peace website
• Murdoch brings in Bush adviser
  Lisa O'Carroll Thursday March 18, 2004 The US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is to address the News Corporation thinktank involving Rupert Murdoch's most senior newspaper executives from the UK, US and Australia. Ms Rice joins Tory leader Michael Howard and Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former director of communcations - both of whom are flying to Cancun, Mexico for the four day event, which starts tonight.
• KILLING IRAQ WITH KINDNESS
  By IAN BURUMA Published: March 17, 2004 One year later, most of the stated reasons for invading Iraq have been discredited. But advocates of the war still have one compelling argument: our troops are not there to impose American values or even Western values, but "universal" ones. The underlying assumption is that the United States itself represents these universal values, and that freedom to pursue happiness, to elect our own leaders and to trade in open markets, should be shared by all, regardless of creed, history, race or culture.
  Still, history shows that the forceful imposition of even decent ideas in the claim of universalism tends to backfire - creating not converts but enemies who will do anything to defend their blood and soil.
• US government faked Bush news reports
  Chris Tryhorn Tuesday March 16, 2004 TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged. The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits.
• Spanish leader accuses Bush and Blair
  Threat to pull troops out of Iraq as row over election result escalates Giles Tremlett in Madrid Tuesday March 16, 2004 The Guardian Spain's new prime minister, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, yesterday followed his dramatic election triumph with a pledge to bring troops home from Iraq and accusations that Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the war.
  Jonathan Eyal, the director of studies at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said if al-Qaida were responsible for last week's bombs, Spain had become the first country "to have a prime minister owing his position to Bin Laden".
• Weak on Terror
  Paul Krugman March 16, 2004 y most immediate priority," Spain's new leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, declared yesterday, "will be to fight terrorism." But he and the voters who gave his party a stunning upset victory last Sunday don't believe the war in Iraq is part of that fight. And the Spanish public was also outraged by what it perceived as the Aznar government's attempt to spin last week's terrorist attack for political purposes. The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of 9/11, must be very, very afraid. Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about the only remaining political strength George Bush has. Yet this reputation is based on image, not reality. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
  Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists. For example, what are we to make of the post-9/11 Saudi airlift? Just days after the attack, at a time when private air travel was banned, the administration gave special clearance to flights that gathered up Saudi nationals, including a number of members of the bin Laden family, who were in the U.S. at the time. These Saudis were then allowed to leave the country, after at best cursory interviews with the F.B.I. And the administration is still covering up for Pakistan, whose government recently made the absurd claim that large-scale shipments of nuclear technology and material to rogue states - including North Korea, according to a new C.I.A. report - were the work of one man, who was promptly pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Bush has allowed this farce to go unquestioned. So when the Bush campaign boasts of the president's record in fighting terrorism and accuses John Kerry of being weak on the issue, when Republican congressmen suggest that a vote for Mr. Kerry is a vote for Osama, remember this: the administration's actual record is one of indulgence toward regimes that are strongly implicated in terrorism, and of focusing on actual terrorist threats only when forced to by events.
• BLOW TO BUSH: AN ALLY IN SPAIN IS REJECTED BY ANTIWAR VOTERS
  By DAVID E. SANGER Published: March 15, 2004 WASHINGTON, March 14 - The ouster of the center-right party in Spain, only days after a terrorist bombing that may be linked to Al Qaeda, is the first electoral rebuke of one of President Bush's most steadfast allies in the Iraq war.
• Spanish government admits defeat
  Spain's ruling Popular Party has admitted an unexpected defeat in the country's general election with almost all the votes counted. The Socialists won 43% of the vote while the centre-right Popular Party has garnered 38%, reports say.
  Initially, the government was adamant the Basque separatist organisation Eta was responsible for the bombings, but now it has been forced to admit that al-Qaeda has become the top suspect. This comes after a videotaped claim of responsibility by a man identifying himself as al-Qaeda's military spokesman in Europe. A BBC correspondent in Madrid says criticism of the way government ministers handled the initial investigation into the attacks may have lost them the election
  Outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his wife were booed and jostled as they arrived to cast their votes. As he tried to address supporters, he was drowned out by cries of "manipulators", "liars" and "peace".
• Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons
  The Observer's David Rose hears the Tipton Three give a harrowing account of their captivity in Cuba Sunday March 14, 2004 The Observer [human rights]
• Writing and Reading as Terrorism
  I Hate to Say "I Told You So," But I Told You So Elaine Cassel March 1, 2004 The Treasury Department, which forbids doing "business" with countries (Iran, Cuba, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea, for instance) who are considered state sponsors of terrorism and are defined as our "enemies," notified editors and publishers that if they change one comma, word, or syntactical element in a document that came from a person who lives in a "forbidden" country, they may be charged with "trading with the enemy," a crime that carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison and a fine of $500,000.
• MANY MAJOR KERRY DONORS ACTUALLY GIVE MORE TO BUSH
  By GLEN JUSTICE Published: March 10, 2004 Senator John Kerry is beginning his drive to compete financially against President Bush with a disadvantage: almost half of his campaign's largest sources of money have given more money to Mr. Bush, according to a new study.
• Military Spending Sparks Warnings
  By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 8, 2004; Page A01 A sharp jump in military spending under President Bush has lifted defense budgets to levels not seen since the height of the Reagan buildup of the early 1980s, prompting warnings by lawmakers and defense analysts that the surge may no longer be sustainable in a time of deepening deficits
• The brains
  He masterminded George Bush's transformation from boozing brat to national leader, and has been called the most powerful adviser in the White House. Now Karl Rove is in charge of the $150m campaign to re-elect Bush. Who is the man the president calls his 'boy genius'? By Julian Borger
  Tuesday March 9, 2004 The Guardian
  In the autumn election season of 1970, a cherubic, bespectacled teenager turned up at the Chicago campaign headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer in Illinois. No one paid the newcomer much attention when he arrived, or when he left soon afterwards. Nor did anyone in the office make the connection between the mystery volunteer and 1,000 invitations on campaign stationery that began circulating in Chicago's red-light district and soup kitchens, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" for all-comers at Dixon's headquarters. As political dirty tricks go, it was minor league. Hundreds of the city's heavy drinkers and homeless turned up at a smart Dixon reception looking for free booze. Dixon was embarrassed but the plot failed to stop his momentum: he was elected state treasurer and went on to become a senator. But the teenager who stole his letterheads, Karl Rove, has gone even further.
• War chief reveals legal crisis
  Antony Barnett and Martin Bright Sunday March 7, 2004 The Observer
  Boyce demanded an unambiguous, one-line note from the Attorney-General saying the war was legal to ensure military chiefs and their soldiers would not be 'put through the mill' at the International Criminal Court.
• The man who took the New York Times for a ride
  [Media] When Jayson Blair was found out plagiarising a news story, it led to soul searching and resignations on one of the world's most famous newspapers. What has become of him since? He tells all to Gary Younge Saturday March 6, 2004
  It also emerged that the paper's bioterrorism expert, Judith Miller, had relied on the Pentagon's favourite Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi, for her stories on weapons of mass destruction, and was accused of having toed their line uncritically.
• Blix dismisses argument that war was legal
  Simon Jeffery Friday March 5, 2004 The former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix today rubbished the government's argument that war in Iraq was legalised by existing security council resolutions.
• Bush 9/11 ads spark anger
  Thursday March 4, 2004 President George Bush's re-election campaign ran into trouble today after he was accused of delivering a "slap in the face" to the victims of the September 11 attacks by using images of the atrocity in television adverts. A £5.5m advertising campaign, which began today in 17 key election states, marked the opening round of Mr Bush's counter-attack against his Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry. One of the 30-second commercials includes a brief clip of a body, wrapped in the American flag, being lifted from the wreckage of New York's World Trade Centre.
• Bush/Cheney campaign website
• The hacks in the machine
  The electronic voting being used in today's Super Tuesday Democratic primaries offers unprecedented opportunities for electoral fraud, write Albert Scardino and John Scardino Tuesday March 2, 2004
• Through A Glass Darkly
  An Interpretation of Bush's Character By John Chuckman 5-27-3
  While I find those images on the Internet of a blunt little mustache digitally-scribbled onto President Bush's upper lip feeble and unhelpful, still, there are parts of Bush's character and behavior that strikingly resemble at least one major biographer's interpretation of Hitler.
  What we witnessed leading up to the invasion bore uncanny similarities to the Munich crisis of 1938, but not the ones so many American commentators point to about a weak-willed Chamberlain appeasing a brutal dictator. People seem to forget Bush was making the threats, not Hussein. Hitler was going to invade the Czechs, and that was that, but he was willing to toy with war-weary Western statesmen, to gain a bit of time or psychological advantage, and to appear open to argument before hurling his divisions over the border. So, too, Bush paused in invading Iraq, allowing Western statesmen to argue their case a bit and make various proposals, but he never listened to them, only hoping he might gain a few more allies, a shred of legitimacy, or a bit of psychological advantage. This provides a very good example of how we do not learn from history. We are most of us always looking for exactly the same lesson from a vaguely similar historical situation, much as generals are said always prepared to fight the last war. But history, as has been accurately observed, is a flowing river which is not the same when touched a second time. Current events are never quite parallel with those of an earlier time despite superficial similarities. However, human character, patterns of behavior, and human interactions are things that may be profitably studied, being constant enough to make valid comparisons over time. Here, too, is an example of how history can be manipulated to abuse political opponents. Critics on the left, in opposing the invasion of Iraq, have been accused of supporting a dictator. This is nonsense, of course, but like many bits of propaganda that become lodged into day-to-day understanding through endless repetition on television and in newspapers, it is nevertheless a powerful nonsense.
• A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation
  3-25-3
• FULL TEXT OF HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD OF THE US IN 2003
  Monday, March 01, 2004 China issued the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003 Monday, March 1, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003 issued by the US on Feb. 25. The Human Rights Record is the fifth Chinese report in response to the annual country reports on human rights by the United States.
• Beating about the Bush
  Two new books by respected American public figures are united in their condemnation of the Bush administration, writes Mark Tran Monday March 1, 2004 Kevin Phillips and George Soros, two very different political animals, have just written two very different books about the Bush presidency. Yet they come to the same conclusion. The sooner Mr Bush is out of the White House, the better for America and the world.
• FOR 2 EX-GENERALS, A COMMON LANGUAGE
  By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: March 1, 2004 WASHINGTON, Feb. 29 - Since Sept. 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has talked on the phone at least 81 times with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, often when the United States is demanding something. There are times when the two men slip into "general to general" mode.
  The Pakistani media are filled with reports that the United States is pressing Mr. Musharraf to help capture Mr. bin Laden to strengthen President Bush's bid for re-election, a charge denied by administration officials.
  Washington's other priority is to learn as much as possible about the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who admitted sharing nuclear technology with Iran and North Korea. Pakistan's cooperation on those matters is so great, American officials say, that they have had no choice but to avoid criticizing Pakistan for pardoning Dr. Khan. Some officials acknowledged that another country might have been excoriated if it had given a slap on the wrist to such a figure. In return, Pakistan has received several rewards from the United States. A Pakistani official said the United States had forgiven half of the $3 billion Pakistan owed it and had helped reschedule $30 billion in debt to other countries. The United States has also helped supply limited military aid to Pakistan but has fallen short in lowering barriers on textile imports from the country. The Pakistani official said he understood that would be too difficult for Mr. Bush because of the political support he needs in textile-producing states like the Carolinas.
• Weapons inspectors' phones 'bugged'
  Blix, Butler 'bugged': Australia Broadcasting Corporation Staff and agencies Friday February 27, 2004 The telephones of former UN chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Richard Butler were also tapped while on missions abroad, it was claimed today, amid the continuing fallout of Clare Short's claims that British spies bugged the UN secretary general. Speaking on Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio, Mr Butler said he was "well aware" that his phone calls were being monitored during his time as chief weapons inspector.
• Steve Bell cartoon: Blair by the balls
• CHINA TO ISSUE HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD OF THE US
  Friday, February 27, 2004 The Information Office of the State Council of China will issue on March 1 the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, in response to the latter's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices which contains "many distortions and denouncements". The Information Office of the State Council of China will issue on March 1 the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, in response to the latter's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices which contains "many distortions and denouncements". It will be the fifth Chinese report in response to the annual country reports on human rights by the United States in five consecutive years. An official with the Information Office said that the United States, as in previous years, acted again as "the world human rights police" by distorting the human right situations in more than 190 countries and regions across the world, including China. However, the reports released by the US State Department on Wednesday once again "omitted" its own long-standing malpractice and problems of human rights. "Therefore, we have to, as before, help the United States keep its own human rights record," said the official. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, based on a great many facts, is divided into six parts, covering life, freedom and personal safety of the US citizens, their political rights and freedom, the living conditions of workers, racial discrimination, conditions for women, children and elderly people, as well as its infringements on the human rights of other nations.
• Bush 'wanted war in 2002'
  Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday February 24, 2004 The Guardian George Bush set the US on the path to war in Iraq with a formal order signed in February 2002, more than a year before the invasion, according to a book published yesterday. The revelation casts doubt on the public insistence by US and British officials throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken to go to war, pending negotiations at the United Nations.
• THE MILITARIZATION OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
  Volume 9, Number 1 February 2004 BY MEL GOODMAN Editor: Miriam Permberton, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
  KEY POINTS * The Defense Department has moved aggressively to eclipse the State Department as the major locus of U.S. foreign policy. * In its campaign for war with Iraq, the Bush administration perpetuated the greatest misuse of intelligence in U.S. history. * The current White House has initiated and escalated a worldwide and continuous war on terrorism that has increased everyone's insecurity
  A growing number at home and abroad are concerned Washington will resort to the use of preemptive force again, perhaps against other so-called "axis of evil" members, North Korea or Iran, before this year's election. U.S. military forces are overextended and are in no position to deal with emergencies that may arise, such as the a genuine crisis on the Korean Peninsula. In North Korea and Iran, the U.S. must establish or reestablish diplomatic relations, offer a combination of security guarantees and economic arrangements, and forge regional alignments to end the isolation of Pyongyang and Tehran.
  Melvin A. Goodman is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and co-author of the forthcoming Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk (Prometheus Books, March 2004). .
• Short claims UK spied on Annan
  · UN: espionage 'illegal' · 'Irresponsible' claim condemned · Blair: agencies acted lawfully George Wright, Martin Nicholls and Matthew Tempest Thursday February 26, 2004
• PERLE QUITS PENTAGON ADVISORY BOARD
  By REUTERS February 26, 2004 Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Noted hawk Richard Perle has quit the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board after 17 years, saying he wants to press his views without becoming an election-year burden for the Bush administration. Widely considered a driving force behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March without a U.N. Security Council resolution, Perle has also faced repeated questions about conflicts of interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense Department.
  In his resignation letter, Perle said he was particularly eager to guard the administration from fall-out from a recent book he co-wrote with David Frum, ``An End to Evil,'' advocating ``bold action'' against Iran, North Korea and other ``sponsors of terrorism,'' including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya.
• Neo-conservatives not the problem
  By Stephen Gowans February 25, 2004.
• The CIA and Saddam Hussein
• GCHQ whistleblower cleared
  Mark Oliver and agencies Wednesday February 25, 2004 GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun demanded an explanation today after the case against her of disclosing information and breaking the Official Secrets Act collapsed after the prosecution offered no evidence. Ms Gun, a former translator for GCHQ, the security service's main monitoring centre, had been accused of leaking a memo to a newspaper on an alleged American "dirty tricks" campaign to spy on UN delegates ahead of the Iraq war.
• The War President Sinking in the Mire
  {Immanuel Wallerstein} Commentary No. 131, Feb. 15, 2004 "I'm a war president," George W. Bush told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press on Feb, 8, 2004. The statement only makes his case weaker. President Bush has had his former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill testify that war against Iraq was on the cabinet's agenda from the day Bush took office. So, it wasn't Sept. 11 that led Bush on this path. And having told the American people and the world, not once but again and again, that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an urgent threat to the United States and the world, Bush hears his hand-picked head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, who was charged with finding Saddam's weapons, testify to the U.S. Congress that he couldn't find any and that he now believed Saddam Hussein gave them up as early as 1991. Bush's standing in the polls fell immediately, and even quite conservative commentators are upset by Kay's findings and by the fact that the U.S. went to war on false pretenses. Everyone now wants to know how U.S. intelligence went awry, as if that were the problem. It is clear that the intelligence, which was itself faulty, was vastly overinterpreted by the Bush administration to meet their preconceived objectives. And it is not true that everyone was wrong. After all, there were clear voices before - the head of the International Atomic Energy Association, Scott Ritter, and others - saying that there was no evidence that weapons existed. Bush is on the defensive.//
• It's a funny old world
  Randy Italians, goose-stepping Germans, thuggish Brits ... Eurotrip features every stereotype going, but it's still hilarious, says John Patterson in his look at the US films Monday February 23, 2004 The Guardian There are a couple of statistics that are good to quote at Americans who favour US military intervention overseas. In a country so anxious to meddle abroad, only 16% of its citizens hold US passports. That is to say, 84% of Americans apparently have no desire to travel in the world they crave to transform. The other statistic is 11%: the percentage of American high-school students who can't find a certain country on a map of the world. The country in question isn't Iraq or North Korea or even old Europe. It's America.
• The Health of Nations
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 17, 2004
  Is this really the crucial issue? It's true that the U.S. spends far more on health care than any other country, but this wouldn't be a bad thing if the spending got results. The real question is why, despite all that spending, many Americans aren't assured of the health care they need, and American life expectancy is near the bottom for advanced countries. Where is the money going? A lot of it goes to overhead. A recent study found that private insurance companies spend 11.7 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, mainly advertising and underwriting, compared with 3.6 cents for Medicare and 1.3 cents for Canada's government-run system. Also, our system is very generous to drug companies and other medical suppliers, because - unlike other countries' systems - it doesn't bargain for lower prices. The result is that American health care, which at its best is the best in the world, offers much of the population a worst-of-all-worlds combination of insecurity and high costs. And that combination is getting worse
• British spy op wrecked peace move
  Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Jo Tuckman in Mexico Sunday February 15, 2004 The Observer A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal. Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of international law. The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.
• THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD
  By MAUREEN DOWD Published: February 15, 2004 After 9/11, his passionate desire to take out Saddam coincided with that of conservatives. All they needed for their belli was a casus, so Mr. Chalabi obligingly conned the neocons. He hoodwinked his pals Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle into believing Iraq would be a flowery cakewalk to democracy. A wily expert in the politics of the bazaar, he knew he had to sell his scheme on what was good for Americans and their security. He was happy to funnel information to the vice president that painted a picture of Saddam hunkered on a hair-raising stockpile of W.M.D. His group, the Iraqi National Congress, tried to spin our government and media through its "information collection program." Intelligence officials now say that the prewar information provided to Washington by this group was suspect and useless, even disinformation. But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week - and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did.
• Huttonise history: the verdict
  On February 3, we invited you to speculate on how Lord Hutton, author of the controversial report on the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, might have interpreted episodes from history. Copies of the new Guardian book, The Hutton Inquiry and its Impact, were the prizes on offer. Below are the 10 winners, followed by a few that narrowly missed the cut. Thursday February 12, 2004
  The winners: Hutton on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: "I am satisfied that the decision to crucify Jesus Christ was one that was made after an independent and rigorous trial by Pontius Pilate. I am further satisfied that Pilate's questioning of him was appropriate and that the Jewish and Roman authorities fully exercised their duty of care towards him.
• Blair: Ignorance or stupidity?
• Britain spied on UN allies over war vote
• Those WMD he didn't have..
  Austin cartoon
• The Hutton Inquiry and its Impact
  The Guardian's security editor, Richard Norton-Taylor, introduces our new book on the implications of Lord Hutton's investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly
  Friday February 6, 2004
• Get Me Rewrite!
  {Paul Krugman}
  Published: February 6, 2004
  Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments...//..
  And if top political figures have their way, there will be further rewriting to come. You may remember that Saddam gave in to U.N. demands that he allow inspectors to roam Iraq, looking for banned weapons. But your memories may soon be invalid. Recently Mr. Bush said that war had been justified because Saddam "did not let us in." And this claim was repeated by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Why on earth didn't [Saddam] let the inspectors in and avoid the war?"
• CIA chief defends weapons intelligence
  Thursday February 5, 2004
  The director of the CIA, George Tenet, today defended US intelligence gathering on Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction. ...//.. Mr Tenet denied that his agency had tailored information to build a case for war. He told his audience at Georgetown University, in Washington DC, that his experts had never claimed that Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security
• BBC dossier reveals fury at Hutton 'flaws'
• The US is now in the hands of a group of extremists
  Fundamentalism has spawned an ideology of American supremacy
  George Soros, Monday January 26, 2004
• Where's the Apology?
  Paul Krugman
  January 30, 2004
  George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability. Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified - under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less - because Saddam "did not let us in.")
• Arundhati Roy addresses World Social Forum
  In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared--reiterated--that "Another World Is Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing. Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs--to further what many call the Project for the New American Century.
  In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?
• Soros prepared to dig deep to oust Bush
  Thursday January 29, 2004
  The 2004 US presidential election will be a referendum on the Bush doctrine of preemptive military action, George Soros, the financier and philanthropist declared today.
  But getting rid of Mr Bush is not enough, Mr Soros argued, saying that the US needs an alternative vision. The man who famously who made a fortune betting against the pound in the late 80s, said America had "gone off the rails" after September 11 and that it was important to "puncture the bubble of American supremacy."
  Expressing his concern at what he saw as a critical lack of debate on Mr Bush's policies, Mr Soros said the president had wrapped himself in the flag and accused the administration of having created an "Orwellian truth machine that manufactures truth."
  If Americans voted Mr Bush out in November, Mr Soros said, the Bush doctrine would be seen as an aberration is US foreign policy, if not then the world would have to live with the consequences.
• In Iraq, the word for US profits is caucuses
  {Stephen Gowans}
  Washington is balking at demands that direct elections be held to select a provisional government in Iraq, because it fears the "moderates" it backs won't win, imperilling its plans to make over the country as a Middle East model of free markets, free trade and free enterprise, thoroughly ensconced in the US economic orbit.
• Gilligan comes out fighting after Hutton drubbing
• Last of the believers
  Only Blair now insists there were Iraqi WMDs. But even claiming an honest mistake will no longer wash
• There is always impeachment
  If MPs believe that the government was out of control over Iraq, they could revive a procedure used against Charles I - and Richard Nixon
  {Dan Plesch}
• Ex-inspector calls for inquiry on prewar intelligence
  The former chief American weapons inspector in Iraq refuted suggestions today that intelligence analysts were under political pressure to bolster President Bush's case for war, saying that faulty intelligence-gathering was to blame for the belief that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction.
• Kay: 'We Were Almost All Wrong'
  Former Weapons Inspector Says Search in Iraq Exposes Gaps in U.S. Intelligence
• Leak against this war
  US and British officials must expose their leaders' lies about Iraq - as I did over Vietnam
  Daniel Ellsberg
  Tuesday January 27, 2004
  I served three US presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied repeatedly and blatantly about our reasons for entering Vietnam, and the risks in our staying there. For the past year, I have found myself in the horrifying position of watching history repeat itself. I believe that George Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their reasons for entering Iraq and the prospects for the invasion and occupation as the presidents I served did about Vietnam.
• Iraq Illicit Arms Gone Before War, Departing Inspector States
• Foreign Policy and Marketing
• The Tourist Who Ran the Place
  Nguyen Cao Ky, the flashy pilot who led South Vietnam and was an anticommunist icon, is home as a visitor eager to leave the past behind.
• Powell: Possible Iraq Had No Banned Arms
  By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer TBLISI, Georgia - Secretary of State Colin Powell held out the possibility Saturday that prewar Iraq may not have possessed weapons of mass destruction.
  Powell was asked about comments last week by David Kay, the outgoing leader of a U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, that he did not believe Iraq had large quantities of chemical or biological weapons.
  "The answer to that question is, we don't know yet,"
• Bush to Portray Libya as Example
• IRAQ: What they don't want you to know
  {John Pilger}
• Their master's voice
  Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too, writes Roy Greenslade [Media]
• The Real Reasons For The Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic And Geostrategic Analysis Of The Unspoken Truth
  {William Clark}, Johns Hopkins University wrc92@aol.com February 2003 Although completely suppressed by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves
• Bush's Muslim propaganda chief quits
  U.S. official: 'She didn't do anything that worked' [Media] The mastermind of U.S. public diplomacy efforts in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resigned from her State Department post Monday. ... U.S. officials also complained privately that though Beers spent a lot of money on slickly produced media ads, she did not understand her target audience: Muslim-majority countries where anti-American sentiment runs high. "She was failing," the official said. "She didn't do anything that worked."
• Our Backyard Pax Americana
  {Tom Barry } February 17, 2003 [Exceptionalism] [New imperialism] The president's grand new strategy of U.S. foreign and military policy envisions a world in which U.S. politics, culture, and economics are the coin of the realm, and where there are no existing or potential threats to U.S. supremacy. Conjured up by a small circle of neoconservatives in the early 1990s, this dream of a global imperium draws heavily on the U.S. experience in asserting its power in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  U.S. unilateralism, exceptionalism, interventionism, neoimperialism--all of which have come to the fore in U.S. foreign policy during President George W. Bush's administration--are homegrown products of what U.S. policymakers still commonly refer to as America's back yard.
• When The Where Conveys More Than The Words
  {Jim Lobe}February 28, 2003 [Information] More than any other think tank in Washington, AEI and its associates, led by Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, have acted as the public vanguard of the most unilateralist and hawkish views adopted by the Bush administration since its inception, and particularly since the September 11,
  "A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he went on, echoing the democratic domino theory that Anthony Cordesman of the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies--a prominent realist analyst close to the State Department and the CIA--has stated "crosses the line between neoconservative and neo-crazy."
• Bushwhacked
  With war looming it is no good the American public looking to its newspapers for an independent voice. For, says Matthew Engel, the press have now become the president's men Monday January 13, 2003 [Media]
• On the nuclear slope
  {Paul Rogers}27 - 2 - 2003 The US war on Iraq might include the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945. Our international security correspondent sets out the rational, historical context of a terrible possibility.
• U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
  [Iraq] [Bush policy][New imperialism]John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, February 27, 2003
  Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?
  Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has "oderint dum metuant" really become our motto?
  oderint dum metuant: Let them hate so long as they fear. - Lucius Accius - Roman tragic poet (170 BC) Believed to be a favorite saying of Caligula. Also translated as "let them hate us, so long as they fear us". Cicero said it. Seneca rebuked Cicero for saying it
• US mulls how Iraq may use chemical-biological arms
  [cbw] [Bizarre] Goure said one way for Iraq to attack troops would be to use crop dusters flying at night at low level, spraying large amounts of agents from 50 miles away (80 km) or more, as the wind blew toward invading soldiers. "That's the kind of thing you would worry about. Lord, is it nasty," Goure said.
• Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
  US Senator Robert Byrd Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003 [Iraq] [Imperialism]
• Running out of patience
  {Terry Jones} [Iraq]
• Kiwi cleaner prepared to pay price for peace
  [Iraq]
• IRAQ: The Count-Down--II
  {B. Raman}
• People power takes to the world's streets
  It started in New Zealand as 10,000 people marched through Auckland and Wellington, then swept over Asia, Africa and Europe. By last night protesters were also on the move in North and South America as a day of protest not seen since the era of the Vietnam War swept the world. Millions marched through more than 300 cities in over 60 countries. Their banners displayed common sentiments of blaming America, Britain and the oil industry for planning war. Some protests were huge, with more than a million people turning out in London and Rome.
• Groundswell Of Dissent Encircles The Globe
  16 February 2003 Millions of people around the world poured on to the streets of their towns and cities yesterday to protest against the prospect of a US-led war on Iraq. The worldwide tidal wave of protest began in New Zealand and rolled around the globe, gathering, as it went, momentum, enthusiasm and a sense of being part of a universal movement. The largest turnout was in Rome, where organisers claimed an attendance of three million. By the end of the weekend, demonstrations will have been held in more than 600 places from Auckland to Iceland, and San Francisco to South Korea.
• UK's biggest peace rally
  Reported to be the biggest peace march in British, and world history. And reports of massive demonstrations elsewhere
• The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America
  {Robert Fisk} [Iraq] [Imperialism] 15 February 2003
• No War Peace Action Korea
  Korean peace group protest against US plans to invade Iraq
• Marching orders for the media
  [Media] [Iraq]
• Iraq due to chair body that helps UN disarm
  [Spin] [Exceptionalism] The chairmanship of the body rotates alphabetically, and Iraq's elevation - which some initially suspected was a joke - has been condemned in Washington as a sign of deep malaise within the UN.
• These Weapons Of Mass Destruction Cannot Be Displayed
• Articles by John Pilger
  {John Pilger}
• Bin Laden tape: Text
• Another Phony Bin Laden Tape
• United States and Greater Europe: "Divide and conquer"
  {Matthew Riemer} February 09, 2003 [Strategic incoherence] ..fractured foreign policy
• The dossier that shamed Britain
  [Iraq] [Information] [Spin]
• First casualties in the propaganda firefight
  [Iraq] [Information] [Spin]
• UK war dossier a sham, say Experts
  [Iraq]
• US FAILS TO MAKE CASE FOR WAR
  {Keith Locke MP}, New Zealand Green Party Foreign Affairs Spokesperson
• 5: Are there alternatives?
  {Tom Nairn} 20 - 2 - 2003 [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• 4. America: being old with a vengeance
  {Tom Nairn} [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• 3. Apocalypse is in the air
  {Tom Nairn} [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• 2. Globalisation today: a human experience
  {Tom Nairn} [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• 1. America: Enemy of globalisation
  {Tom Nairn} [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• America first: the case to answer
  {Philip Bobbit} {Paul Hirst} [Imperialism][New imperialism]
• Responding To Colin Powell
  {Rahul Mahajan} [Iraq]
• War's Opening Hours
  {Jim Hoagland}[Iraq] [Media]
• Performance Ratings and Priority Rankings for US Foreign Policy
  [Public Opinion] [US NK negotiations]
• Call to Conscience From Veterans to Active Duty Troops and Reservists
• Stronger than ever
  Far from fizzling out, the global justice movement is growing in numbers and maturity {George Monbiot}
• Blair Is A Coward
  (John Pilger}[Tony Blair] [Imperialism][WMD] [cbw]' leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair.' Jan 29 2003
• The Brains Behind Bush's War
  [New imperialism]
• Warheads Not Chemical
  [Iraq] [cbw]
• William Blum Page
  [Terrorism] [Imperialism]
• The CIA's Secret Army
  [Imperialism][Terrorism] [US military]
• Charlotte Beers and the selling of America
  [Media] November 05, 2001
• Charlotte Beers Under Secretary, Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs US State Department
  [Media] (bio)
• Charlotte Beers' Toughest Sell; Can she market America to hostile Muslims abroad?
  [Media]
• Can Charlotte Beers Sell Uncle Sam?
  [Media] Margaret Carlson on a former ad whiz's new gig
• Public Diplomacy After September 11
  {Charlotte Beers}Remarks by Charlotte Beers, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs to the National Press Club: Edited Version, Washington, DC, 18 December 2002 [Media] [Powell] [New imperialism]
• The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering The Bush Administration's Motives
  {Michael T. Klare} [Iraq] [Imperialism] [WMD] [Threat] [Oil] [Racialism] [Threat]( January 16, 2003)
• The Prospects For Al Qaeda
  {Paul Rogers} [Terrorism] [Asymmetrical power] (January 24, 2003)
• News from Baghdad
  {Oxford Research Group} [Iraq]
• War Journalists Should Not Be Cosying Up To The Military
  {Robert Fisk} [Media] [Iraq]
• Other Voices, Other Views: Arrogance is Humility
  {Sheldon Richman}[Spin] [Media]
• A Lesson In U.S. Propaganda
  {Mark Crispin Miller} [Media] [Spin]
• Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002
  {Mike Ward} [Spin] [Media]
• A World Against The War
  [Iraq]
• There is no evidence. There is no case for war
  [Iraq]
• This Looming War Isn't About Chemical Warheads Or Human Rights: It's About Oil
  {Robert Fisk} [Oil] [Iraq][Media]
• Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society
  report from American Council of Civil Liberties
• If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq
• Rooting out Evil
  [Inspections] [WMD]
• Uncle Sam Desperately Seeks Reason to Attack Iraq
• National Geographic - Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey
  [Exceptionalism]
• Poet laureate joins doubters over Iraq
  [Imperialism]
• Washington Post Ideas Industry column
  [Information]
• Lobbyists Seen Lurking Behind Tank Funding
  [Information]
• Investing in Nuclear Nonproliferation
  [Information] [NPT]
• A new Pearl Harbor
  {John Pilger} [Imperialism][Terrorism]
• No Endgame in Afghanistan
  [US military]
• The Bush Vision and the Culture of Power
  {Saul Landau} [Imperialism]
• Debating Post-Saddam policy: hardliners v. realpolitikers
  (Jim Lobe}
• Nuclear Posture Review
  (Excerpts}[US Military]
• Special Briefing on the Nuclear Posture Review
  [US Military]
• The Nuclear Posture Review: Reading Between the Lines
  {Michelle Ciarrocca} [US military]
• Bush's nuclear doctrine:from MAD to NUTS?
  {William D. Hartung} [US military]
• What the world thinks in 2002
  [Anti-Americanism] {Pew} (Pew research project}
• Not in Our Name
  US peace group
• Boutros-Ghali bites back
  {Ian Williams}
• So Long, Saddam
  {Jim Hoagland} [Bizarre]
• Bush, Iraq and Sister Souljah
  {Thomas Friedman}
• THE ROLE OF THINK TANKS IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
• No War on Iraq
  (US anti-war website) [imperialism]
• An open letter from the academic community opposing a U.S. Invasion of Iraq
• Hegemony to Imperium
  {Tom Barry} [New imperialism]
• Rome, AD ... Rome, DC?
  {Jonathan Freedland} [New imperialism]
• What Britannia taught Bush
  {Linda Colley} [New imperialism]
• What really changed
  {Jonathan Freedland}[New imperialism]
• A War Based on Lies
  {John Pilger} [Iraq]
• Blame it on the Romans: Pax Americana and the Rule of Law
  {THOMAS W. McSHANE} [New imperialism]
• U.S. agency approves Taiwan's shopping list for missiles, other weapons
  [Rocketry] [Armaments] [Double standards] [Tribute]
• US moves to sell Egypt missiles, radar, aircraft
  [Rocketry] [Armaments] [Double standards] [Tribute]
• America's Imperial Ambition
  {G. John Ikenberry} [New imperialism]
• Proposed FY 2003 Budget Would Complete Plan to Double Health R&D Funding, Considerably Expand Defense R&D
  [Armaments][S&T]
• Washington Goes to War
  {Jim Lobe}
• A Virus of the Mind
• U.S. correctional population at record high
  [human rights]
• Surrendering Reason to Power
  [Imperialism] [Extraterritoriality] [Human rights] {John Gershman}
• Revisiting the Gulf War
• Why Don't We Listen Anymore?
  [New imperialism] {Clyde Prestowitz}
• The Empty Promise of Global Missile Defense
  [Missile Defense] {Frida Berrigan} {William D. Hartung}
• View Abroad: Bush's War on Terrorism Is Floundering
  {Dan Plesch} [New imperialism] (July 18, 2002)
• Frontier Justice: A Weekly Chronicle
  [New imperialism] {Tom Barry}
• The Yellow Peril Revisited
  [China] [Sanctions] [Imperialism] {Jim Lobe} and {Tom Barry}
• U.S. Foreign Policy-Attention, Right Face, Forward March
  [Imperialism] {Tom Barry} and {Jim Lobe}
• Bulletin from Bali: What Are We Going to Do About the United States? {Eric Mann}
• Rightwing Ideology and U.S. Military Global Reach Stand Against Criminal Court
  [Jim Lobe] [Tom Barry] [New imperialism]
• Fallacies of U.S. Plans to Invade Iraq [Stephen Zunes]
• 30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War
• The resubordination of East Asia (Part II)
• Journalism should not yield to patriotism
• US Congress: Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000
• Bush Speech on Preemptive Strikes
  [New imperialism]
• Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001
• US Defense Spending
• Media Transparency website [US group researching foundation funding]
• America's mounting division with allies [William Pfaff]
• Telecom, Tangled in Its Own Web
• The War on Dissent Widens [Jim Lobe]
• We shell not exonerate Saddam Hussein....
• Crony Capitalism Goes Global by TIM SHORROCK
• Carlyle's way Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government, and industry. [Dan Briody]
• Apologies to Seoul and Beijing [Chalmers Johnson]
• Shoulder to shoulder with China as he parades his hypocrisy round the world ... just what is Bush using for a brain? Ian Bell
• Stars earn their stripes
  [Media][Culture war]
• Scoundrels and Outlaws Tom Barry
• U.S. drops pledge on nukes
• Evil axis hissy fit
• U.S. promises to consult allies before doing what it was going to do anyway
• Bold Turkmen project in the pipeline again
• FRENCH JUDGE GIVES TALIBAN WIN
• BUSH ASKS NON-U.S. OLYMPIANS TO UNITE BEHIND AMERICA BY FINISHING BEHIND AMERICA
• Wen Ho Lee's Life Under Suspicion
• U.S. Considers Military Action to Remove Skating Judges
• HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS DEMAND WARS IN EASIER-TO-FIND COUNTRIES
• ANGERED BY SNUBBING, LIBYA, CHINA SYRIA FORM AXIS OF JUST AS EVIL, Cuba, Sudan, Serbia Form Axis of Somewhat Evil; Other Nations Start Own Clubs
• American Perceptions of Korea