* ignore ALL NEWS of torture abuse of female Iraqi prisoners,

* ignore our ignominious DEFEAT in FALLUJA

* ignore the empty trucks driving through Iraq!

* IGNORE all news of our ''ally'' CHALABI being an IRANIAN spy,

* verily thou shalt IGNORE the onset of Hubberts Peak.

St. John of Ashcroft,
High Inquisitor and Witchfinder General,
1st Legion of Christ, Republican.

Post Scriptum: In the event of your death (God forbid) in a terrorist outrage, rest assured that 300 Muslims shall be most bloodily put to the sword for every American killed. It's the only language these crazy pagans understand.

Post Post Scriptum: In the event of your survival of a terrorist attack, it is the policy of this administration (and therefore The Will of GOD) that thou and thy family shouldst go hence to Florida, the therein take shelter and nourishment at The Land of Disney, thereby helping THE ECONOMY (and CONFOUNDING the schemes of the evil HEATHEN terrorists).

   

One of the journalists involved told how he was repeatedly beaten during interrogations and forced to spend hours kneeling with his feet raised off the ground. "If my hands or feet went down they would hit me, he said. "The interrogation lasted three or four hours.

"They put tissue paper in my mouth. I could hardly breathe. They said that we had fired at the helicopter. I said: 'I swear to God it wasn't me.' They said 'If you swear to God again, we'll break you into a thousand pieces.'

"When I was knocked over they helped me up again. But if I fell down again they would come and hit me more. There was a shoe on the ground and they told me to chew and lick it. They made me suck my middle finger. They told me to stick my finger in my anus and then lick it," he said.

Ahmed described a horrendous scene of bullet-riddled musical instruments from the 13 band members killed in the assault, blood and pieces of flesh drying in the sand, and mourning neighbors and family members of slain wedding celebrants.

A list of victims from last week’s attack showed that 12 women and seven children under the age of 18 lay among the dead, including a 4 year-old girl named Fatima, as well as Ra’ad, a one month-old baby boy. The list was provided by Dr. Hambdi Al-Rawi, director of the hospital in Al-Qaim.

"Iraqis everywhere are saddened by what happened there," said Ahmed. "But they are even more enraged at the lying of the American military and their complete disrespect towards the Iraqi people."

Four US soldiers will be reprimanded for forcing two Iraqi detainees to jump off a bridge into the Tigris River earlier this year, a military spokesman said...

...There have been conflicting accounts on whether anyone died in the January 4 bridge incident near Samarra, The Washington Post reported last month. Some soldiers at the scene said both men swam to safety, but one of the Iraqis told a US officer his countryman died. A body washed up 10 days later.

   

...the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded, after a review of thousands of intelligence documents, that the INC's Information Collection Program (ICP), which until last week had received millions of dollars in US taxpayer funding in the last decade, has essentially been an Iranian disinformation operation designed to get the US to oust Saddam Hussein and that the ICP's chief, currently on the lam in Tehran, was an Iranian agent.

Ouch!!!

Following an investigation, during which an orthodox rabbi was dispatched to India to monitor the practice, the women have been told that in future only synthetic wigs will be acceptable because it would take just one Indian hair to contaminate a whole wig.

So here we are stuck in the world of reality with a flood of fundamentalist zealots, a horde of religious dipsomaniacs whose contempt and rejection of reason know no bounds. The very recklessness and fanaticism of their belief systems make them a constant threat and neverending danger to all those on space-ship earth and render them incapable of living and functioning, positively and objectively, in the one and only world we have. "True believers," unfortunately, have shown time and time again that they would rather perish and take humanity with them than ever acknowledge the fact that their terrorist gods are but a figmentation of their own reptilian brains, nothing more than a mirror image of the savage beast within.

...an all-party group of MPs from the Foreign Affairs Committee has returned from a visit to the country shocked and alarmed by what they witnessed. They warn that urgent action must be taken to save Afghanistan from plunging further into chaos because of Western neglect...

... With the focus of Washington and London firmly on Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan has been allowed to unravel. The remaining infrastructure is shattered, opium production is rocketing, and the Taliban and warlords are back in control of large areas.

Testimony from girls and aid workers...in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.

Uh Oh: The Big Lab Experiment Could ''God'' be some jerk in a lab screwing around with a petri dish? It's starting to look like it. "You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker." 3hit. W3 4Re H4xor3D!!!

Amid the rubble of dozens of homes that the Israeli army continued yesterday to deny demolishing, the wrecking of the tiny, but only, zoo in the Gaza Strip took on potent symbolism for many of the newly homeless.

The butchered ostrich, the petrified kangaroo cowering in a basement corner, the tortoises crushed under the tank treads - all were held up as evidence of the pitiless nature of the Israeli occupation.

"People are more important than animals," said the zoo's co-owner Mohammed Ahmed Juma, whose house was also demolished. "But the zoo is the only place in Rafah that children could escape the tense atmosphere. There were slides and games for children. We had a small swimming pool. I know it's hard to believe, looking at it now, but it was beautiful. Why would they destroy that? Because they want to destroy everything about us."

In his May 11 and May 12 radio show Savage Nation, Michael Savage called Arabs "non-humans" and "racist, fascist bigots." The Clear Channel syndicated radio host later asserted that Americans should "drop a nuclear weapon" on a random Arab capital, and that "these people" in the Middle East "need to be forcibly converted to Christianity" in order to "turn them into human beings."

Without skipping a beat, Savage on May 14 downplays Iraqi prisoner abuses at the hands of American military personnel: "I think it's a very good policy, and the more I learn about it I think that it made good sense. . . . Use little women in particular. Little, ugly women. And let 'em take big strapping Iraqis and put 'em on leashes naked. . . Get police dogs to bark at naked Iraqis, until they crack . . . "

...two of the returning soldiers from the 870th MP unit, Sgt. Mike Sindar and military policeman Ramon Leal, brought to light the anger and racism against Iraqi prisoners. Hooded prisoners had racial taunts written on their hoods such as "camel jockey." Sindar and Leal also mentioned that "a lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression" towards the prisoners that abuse was very common.

The same anti-Muslim sentiments found their place on the slurs soldiers wrote on rockets and cruise missiles before launched on Iraqi targets last year, photos of which were proudly published by newspapers across America.

The president was nearing the end of a 17-mile ride on his mountain bike, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, a military aide and his personal physician, Richard Tubb, who treated him at the scene, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," Duffy said. "You know this president. He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes.

"We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell.

"I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me."

Mrs Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house.

Inside a tasteful room in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad sat Adel Abdul Mehdi, a chubby, gray-haired, intelligent man whose name circulates here as a possible Iraqi prime minister. He recounted how, a year ago, he was handcuffed during a raid at his political party's headquarters as American soldiers - "in a very brutal way," he bristled - debated whether to kill him.

"Should I shoot him, sir?" Mr. Mehdi said one soldier asked his superior. "Should I blast his head?"

Kimmitt quote # 1: ''We will attack to destroy the al-Mahdi Army,'' Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters. "Those attacks will be deliberate, precise and they will be successful."

Kimmitt quote # 2: "We don't see it as a necessary requirement that any military action has to occur in Najaf ... There are many ways for the town of Najaf to come back under legitimate control ... that don't involve any fighting at all,"

Kimmitt quote # 1: ''We're on the right track and there's no reason to change any of the significant aspects of where we're heading either, in any of the lines of operation.''Feb 25, 2004

No sooner said than Ka-Boom! Iraq erupts in violence!

Kimmitt quote # 2: ''It certainly ranks among one of the days where the terrorists have decided to send a significant message to the coalition and to the people of Iraq.'' March 2, 2004

"I would say it's a gross mischaracterization to suggest that the entire country is at war, that the entire country is now under the grips of combat."

Justice Minister Yosef Lapid on Sunday harshly criticized Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip, saying it must end and warning that it could seriously damage Israel's standing in the world.

Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Lapid said Israel must halt the destruction. "The demolition of houses in Rafah must stop. It is not humane, not Jewish, and causes us grave damage in the world."

Specifying the potential damage in the international community, Lapid said: "At the end of the day, they'll kick us out of the United Nations, try those responsible in the international court in The Hague, and no one will want to speak with us."

Lapid sparked controversy when he said a picture of an elderly Palestinian woman searching on all fours for her medication reminded him of his grandmother.

On a day when bodies of children were being stuffed into a big refrigerator used to store potatoes, and when thousands of homeless people were fleeing for their lives (some of them refugees rendered homeless for the second or third time), life in Israel went on as usual, as though what was happening in Rafah was not being done in the name of the country's citizens. Such apathy renders all of us responsible - and yet there are some who bear a heavier burden of responsibility. In a climate less lax than the one which has gripped Israel in recent years, they would be ostracized...

...In past years, these three generals - Sharon, Mofaz and Ya'alon - have been responsible for a long list of despicable acts. At the end of last week, Haidar Hasuna told an investigator from B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, about bulldozers that began to demolish his home in the besieged Tel Sultan neighborhood in Rafah, when he was sitting with his wife and children in their living room. When he tried to leave the house, he was floored by tank fire. Miraculously, the family survived.

Members of the Mantsur family from the Brazil neighborhood told Haaretz's Amira Hass how they fled barefoot from their home as the IDF began to demolish it. A few months before this incident, a pregnant woman was killed during similar house demolition circumstances in the El Bureij refugee camp, in plain view of her children. Somebody is responsible.

   

You've got to admire those Funny Fascists at Fox News... They can try to spin anything. Note the headline from Friday's website: "Most Iraqi Abuse Photos Taken on Single Day" - You might be forgiven for thinking that everything was A-OK, until Grainer, England and their pals got out of bed in a really bad mood one morning, and started sodomising Iraqis. On a single day, mind you. I love the "Only Following Orders" line above that. (It may be true, but it's SO 1946!)

Bush has neither threatened war nor pursued diplomacy. He has recently, and halfheartedly, agreed to hold talks; the next round is set for June. But any deal that the United States might cut now to dismantle North Korea's nuclear-weapons program will be harder and costlier than a deal that Bush could have cut 18 months ago, when he first had the chance, before Kim Jong-il got his hands on bomb-grade material and the leverage that goes with it.

The pattern of decision making that led to this debacle--as described to me in recent interviews with key former administration officials who participated in the events--will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Bush and his cabinet in action. It is a pattern of wishful thinking, blinding moral outrage, willful ignorance of foreign cultures, a naive faith in American triumphalism, a contempt for the messy compromises of diplomacy, and a knee-jerk refusal to do anything the way the Clinton administration did it.

''Though cowards shirk and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here...''

   

In sworn statements, detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad said they were beaten and sexually humiliated. They were also force-fed pork and alcohol, against their Muslim beliefs.

One detainee, named in the report as Ameen Saeed al-Sheik, said he was asked by a soldier whether he believed in anything.

"I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"

He said one soldier struck his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam.

"Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," the paper quoted him as saying. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive."

The Washington Post said eight of the detainees identified one soldier, Specialist Charles Graner, who is facing charges of maltreatment, indecent acts and obstruction of justice.

One detainee accused him of repeatedly throwing prisoners' meals into the toilets and saying, "Eat it."

Spc Graner has previously said he was following instructions given to him by military intelligence officials.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

Hilas told investigators that he asked Graner for the time one day because he wanted to pray. He said Graner cuffed him to the bars of a cell window and left him there for close to five hours, his feet dangling off the floor. Hilas also said he watched as Graner and others sodomized a detainee with a phosphoric light.

...he was kept naked for five days when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib and was forced to kneel for four hours with a hood over his head. He said he was beaten so badly one day that the hood flew off his head. "The police was telling me to crawl in Arabic, so I crawled on my stomach and the police were spitting on me when I was crawling, and hitting me on my back, my head and my feet," he said in his sworn statement.

One day, the detainee said, American soldiers held him down and spread his legs as another soldier prepared to open his pants. "I started screaming," he said. A soldier stepped on his head, he said, and someone broke a phosphoric light and spilled the chemicals on him.

"I was glowing and they were laughing," he said.

The detainee said the soldiers eventually brought him to a room and sodomized him with a nightstick. "They were taking pictures of me during all these instances," he told the investigators.

"Do you pray to Allah?" one asked. "I said yes. They said, 'Fuck you. And fuck him.' One of them said, 'You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, 'Are you married?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.' One of them said, 'But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.' "

   

...the Army’s elite Delta Force is now the subject of a Pentagon inspector general investigation into abuse against detainees.

The target is a top-secret site near Baghdad’s airport. The battlefield interrogation facility known as the “BIF” is pictured in satellite photos.

According to two top U.S. government sources, it is the scene of the most egregious violations of the Geneva Conventions in all of Iraq’s prisons. A place where the normal rules of interrogation don’t apply, Delta Force’s BIF only holds Iraqi insurgents and suspected terrorists — but not the most wanted among Saddam’s lieutenants pictured on the deck of cards.

These sources say the prisoners there are hooded from the moment they are captured. They are kept in tiny dark cells. And in the BIF’s six interrogation rooms, Delta Force soldiers routinely drug prisoners, hold a prisoner under water until he thinks he’s drowning, or smother them almost to suffocation.

Here we go again: More Photos Surface Just wait for the the loony right excuses: ''He was killed in a hazing prank - it happens at Yale all the time.'' Or how about ''We should blame feminists f or allowing women in the military.'' Maybe ''If the left wing universities had allowed the army to recruit a better class of soldier, this would never have happened.'' Or you could blame the Irish! more from The Guardian

A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators.

...the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.

ABRAMS: Hi everyone. Topping the agenda, what could be a controversial step in the war on terror. The possibility of using children as an interrogation tool. Right now U.S. authorities are grilling capture al Qaeda commander Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in an undisclosed country, and time is of the essence. It's a safe bet Mohammed doesn't want to talk, but he may have some incentive to do so.

When U.S. and Pakistani authorities nabbed alleged 20th hijacker Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan in September, Mohammed, who was hiding with Binalshibh got away. His two elementary school-aged sons did not, and they were taken into custody. The question now, can U.S. interrogators use Mohammed's kids as leverage to get him to talk, and no one is suggesting the kids be harmed in any way, but if threatening to hurt them gets Mohammed to spill the beans about al Qaeda, is that really a problem?

"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss," General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of US central command, told the Senate foreign relations committee.

The apocalyptic language is becoming increasingly common here among normally moderate and cautious politicians and observers.

Larry Diamond, an analyst at the conservative Hoover Institution, said: "I think it's clear that the United States now faces a perilous situation in Iraq.

"We have failed to come anywhere near meeting the post-war expectations of Iraqis for security and post-war reconstruction.

"There is only one word for a situation in which you cannot win and you cannot withdraw - quagmire."...

Meanwhile, traditional conservatives who see American interests in the Middle East as focused on a regular supply of oil are anxious because it has pulled its troops out of one big producer, Saudi Arabia, without establishing a sustainable military presence in another, Iraq.

"Anyway you look at this, outside the most extreme optimistic assessments, we end up weaker," a senior Republican international strategist said.

The conservatives' growing awareness that failure may be imminent has generated a backlash against the more radical "neo-conservatives" such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, who are blamed for persuading President Bush that an invasion would be relatively easy.

Anthony Cordesman, a military scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the most serious problem in US government was "the fact that a small group of neo-conservative ideologues were able to substitute their illusions for an effective planning effort by professionals".

General Hoar was equally scathing about the calibre of the Bush administration.

"The policy people in both Washington and Baghdad," he said, "have demonstrated their inability to do a job on a day-to-day basis this past year."

   

The US serviceman waited outside the latrine and hit the woman on the back of the head as she exited, knocking her unconscious. He tied her hands with cord, blindfolded her, cut her clothes off with a knife, stuffed her underwear in her mouth and proceeded to rape her. When she regained consciousness and began to resist, he threatened to rape her with the knife instead. He hit her in the head again, this time forcefully between the eyes, again causing her to lose consciousness. When she came to she was transported to another facility where she was interrogated for three hours. She received no medical treatment for her head injuries. For the first few days following the rape she was housed with another woman; she was subsequently left in isolation for an extended period. Her requests for religious counsel were denied.

Sound like the latest exposé from Abu Ghraib? Guess again. It’s just one of the more than 100 incidents of rape, sexual assault and other forms of sexual misconduct reported in the past 18 months by U.S. women soldiers currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been sexually assaulted by fellow U.S. soldiers.

   

   

Today there is no pleasure in being British. We are almost a pariah nation. Ordinary British citizens are now starting to learn about the terrible things that have been done in our name...Tony Blair went to great lengths to share the credit with President Bush during their triumphalist, flag-draped victory summit 12 months ago. Now he must stomach the disgrace.

The Prime Minister appears not to sense any of this. But hopefully this low-grade and wretched man will be out of Downing Street before long, because many of his party are starting to feel the moral humiliation that already grips the rest of us. The most sordid moment yet of Tony Blair’s increasingly despicable premiership came two weeks ago when, in a response to Sir Peter Tapsell at Prime Minister’s Questions, he defended the murder of hundreds of innocents in Fallujah...

...Tony Blair’s dedication to George Bush is so total that he will follow the President into any killing field or torture chamber. It may in due course become highly relevant that Britain, but not the United States, has signed up to the International Criminal Court.

Where Are You Heading, America? The Patriot Act is hideously reminiscent of the "Decree for the Protection of Nation and State" that became law in Nazi Germany in February 1933...Hitler made his legislation (the "Enabling Act") "sound moderate and promised to use its emergency powers "only in so far as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures"." Does that sound horribly familiar?

...today we are presented with another opportunity in the form of scores of false media prophets who predicted disaster should the U.S. military confront and seek to oust the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. The purpose of a cultural war crimes tribunal would be to remind the public of journalism's many mistakes, as well as the errors of certain politicians and retired generals, and allow it to properly judge their words the next time they feel the urge to prophesy.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired U.S. Army general who commanded the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago during Desert Storm, told the BBC's "Newsnight" program on March 24: "(We) could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties." Thankfully, the casualty numbers have been incredibly small.

Gary Brecher: Most Valuable Weapon: the RPG An excellent account of the RPG, and its role in wars from Vietnam to Iraq. Find out how to obliterate an armoured column, in two easy steps... Those Chechens are some scary bastards!

U.S. tanks rumbled Friday into the vast cemetery in the southern city of Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred places, in pursuit of anti-occupation insurgents loyal to the rebel cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

In images broadcast across the Middle East on Arabic satellite channels, two U.S Army Kiowa helicopters fluttered above the sea of ochre and tan tombs on the edge of the city. Olive-green Abrams tanks, part of the 1st Armored Division, appeared to fire into the tombs. Plumes of gray and black smoke puffed up from between the grave markers.

My own view is that Muqtada has now won politically and morally. He keeps throwing Abu Ghuraib in the faces of the Americans. He had his men take refuge in Najaf and Karbala because he knew only two outcomes were possible. Either the Americans would back off and cease trying to destroy him, out of fear of fighting in the holy cities and alienating the Shiites. Or they would come in after Muqtada and his militia, in which case the Americans would probably turn the Shiites in general against themselves. The latter is now happening.

The Americans will be left with a handful of ambitious collaborators at the top, but the masses won't be with them. And in Iraq, unlike the US, the masses matter. The US political elite is used to being able to discount American urban ghettos as politically a cipher. What they don't realize is that in third world countries the urban poor are a key political actor and resource, and wise rulers go out of their way not to anger them.

For Huda Shaker, the humiliation began at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American soldiers demanded to search her handbag. When she refused one of the soldiers pointed his gun towards her chest.

"He pointed the laser sight directly in the middle of my chest," said Professor Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "Then he pointed to his penis. He told me, 'Come here, bitch, I'm going to fuck you.'"

The incident is one of a number in which US soldiers are alleged to have abused, intimidated or sexually humiliated Iraqi women.

According to Prof Shaker, several women held in Abu Ghraib jail were sexually abused, including one who was raped by an American military policeman and became pregnant. She has now disappeared.

After 9/11, several columnists lost their jobs for pointing out that Pres. George W. Bush hid in a bunker on the day of the attacks. Dixie Chicks's records were burned. Censorship was everywhere.

Americans, suddenly aware of their vulnerability, desperately wanted to believe they had a leader who could keep them safe. Playing on that, the right-wing Republicans erected an impermeable wall around Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney: no press conferences; no public appearances that weren't scripted; lies and evasions from the press secretary to a cowed and imprisoned White House press corps. Speaking against Bush was called treason. People were denounced for it. Muslims were randomly put in jail.

The wall helped maintain the illusion that the government was on our side, working to protect us. God save the King!

Now the wall has been shattered. First came the immensely touching photographs of flag-draped coffins. Then ABC's "Nightline" showed us the names and faces of 721 Americans who have died in Iraq. Then came the Abu Ghraib torture photos and videos. Then came the even more shocking information that "contractors" (read mercenaries), not American soldiers, are running that show. Now we have the revenge beheading of an American businessman. Next, I understand, we'll be seeing videos of American soldiers sodomizing Iraqi prisoners and having sex in front of them.

Meanwhile, the conservatives - Who are these people? How deeply can one person dig his or her head in the sand and still be able to breathe? - are doing their best to regain control.

For the ruling class, life in Midland entails a job in the oil business, a marriage in the early 20s, at least four kids, a couple of SUVs and church every Sunday. Cultural life is sketchy. In early April there's a "Family Literacy Style Show" at the Petroleum Club. Early this month there was the Texas Gun and Knife Show. In mid-December there's The Nutcracker by the Midland Festival Ballet. There are a couple of mediocre art galleries. There's not a single bookshop - which may lead cynics to explain why, when he was about to invade Iraq, Bush still didn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites. A football match between the white collars of Midland and the blue collars of neighboring Odessa passes for a major cultural event, but not as much as the staggering mutual hatred. No nightclubs, no lap dancing in Midland. Roughly there's absolutely nothing to do except pray to the Lord.

"For us, the economy is great," said Allen, senior vice president and general manager of Armor Holdings Inc.'s Mobile Security Division. "It's a sad situation, but . . . " His voice trailed off, then he added, "I don't think anyone here is thinking about it that way."

In this corner of a critical presidential-election battleground state, the economy is surging with the urgency of a boom. But it wasn't President Bush's tax cuts, Federal Reserve interest rate policies or even a general economic turnaround that did the trick. It was war.

Conservatives see how the principle of “unintended consequences” dooms domestic social programs to failure; but they fail to see how the same principle applies to war. They expect war, alone among government projects, to be efficient in achieving its goals; they are reluctant to admit failure, preferring to believe that more force will produce success.

And so, as the tragedy of the Iraq war deepens, Americans — the ones who count, anyway — see no tragedy, least of all a tragedy of their own making. They see only villainy frustrating their designs. First there was the villainy of Saddam Hussein, now the villainy of loosely defined “terrorists,” and of course the villainy of others — Spaniards, liberals, “Old Europe” — who won’t “stay the course.”

   

Our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13. We permit television and computers to bring all manner of filth into our homes. We permit school children to be taught that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle. We allow Christianity and the teaching of Judeo-Christian values to be scrubbed from the public square.

The use of torture to gain information which will save soldiers' lives is always a temptation in war. Captain John Seely (later Lord Mottistone) seems not to have understood that torture can be mental as well as physical. He himself related that during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) he once threatened to shoot a small Boer boy in the presence of his mother unless he told where his father was hiding. The boy steadfastly refused, even when a firing squad was formed. Seely, who had no intention of carrying out his threat, was well pleased with the courage of the boy and, before he rode away, congratulated the terrified mother on the possession of such a son.
Mr. Kipling's Army, Byron Farwell (p.123)

American soldiers subjected a 16-year-old Iraqi prisoner to a mock execution inside an American detention centre and made his brothers watch, one of the brothers alleged yesterday.
Husam Mahawish told The Independent he was forced to watch as an American soldier put a handgun to his younger brother Mohammed's forehead and pulled the trigger. "I thought he was going to kill Mohammed," Mr Mahawish said. "But instead there was a click. There was no bullet."
The Independent, Justin Huggler in Baghdad

Some have thought it curious that Kipling's poems often praised the bravery and fine fighting qualities of the Dervishes ('Fuzzy-Wuzzy') and the Boers ('Piet'), but British soldiers understood, for they too admired such qualities in their opponents. Stirring up hatred of the enemy might be necessary to raise volunteers, but professinal soldiers did not need to indulge in it.
Mr. Kipling's Army, Byron Farwell (p.110)

The attitudes of many of the grunts on patrol probably mirror the views of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott. He was quoted as saying, "if we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens" (Newsweek, November 10, 2003). In the next edition of the magazine, Newsweek published some very frank quotes from the frustrated troops. "F--- 'em. Kill 'em all' said one. Another had this to say, "I don't trust the hajis. If they do something I'll pop one of them."
Ahmed Amr Editor NileMedia.com

The International Committee of the Red Cross also described British troops forcing Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one prisoner died...

...The Red Cross report described him as one of nine men arrested in a Basra hotel and "made to kneel, face and hands against the ground, as if in a prayer position. The soldiers stamped on the back of the neck of those raising their head."

The worst U.S. crimes in Iraq have received far less press than the photos of U.S. soldiers having fun and games with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib—not that the prisoners were anything but terrified by these vile amusements—but the truly terrible crimes have not gone totally unreported, especially in the news media outside the United States...

...Along a quiet residential street in Fallujah, nine-year-old Rahad Septi and other children were playing hide-and-seek when the pilot of a U.S. A-10 aircraft dropped a bomb there. Rahad, “little flower” to her father Juma Septi, was killed along with ten other children, and twelve other children were wounded. Three adults also were killed. Jamal Abbas was driving his taxi when the bomb fell. He found his eleven-year-old niece Arij Haki with “the top half of her head . . . blown off.” After half an hour of searching amid the devastation, Abbas found his daughter, eleven-year-old Miad Jamal Abbas, “her body bloody and ripped.” She died later at the hospital. “There was no military activity in this area,” said Saad Ibrahim, whose father Hussein was killed in his nearby shop by the same bomb blast. “There was no shooting. This is not a military camp. These are houses with children playing in the street.“

   

THE IRISH!

Diplomat blames Irish media for hatred of America

The Irish media have been accused of helping to fuel the anti-American hatred that led to the suicide attacks on 11 September, 2001.

Retired American diplomat George Dempsey has claimed sections of the Irish press and broadcasters share the responsibility for what happened in New York and Washington DC on 9/11. In an exclusive extract from his memoirs published next month, the former head of the United States Embassy's political section in Dublin has also launched a bitter critique of Irish foreign policy.

On the Irish media's response to the attacks, Dempsey said: 'Let us be clear about this. The Irish media, in general, bear their share of the responsibility for what happened in the United States.

The occupiers' stock is near zero, and still, in Washington and Westminster, the myth lives on. As if playing the nursery game of grandmother's footsteps, Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon tread faithfully in Bush's erratic tracks. The US attacks Falluja, and Hoon is all for that. Troops give up and hand over to a Saddamite commander. Hoon could not have planned it better himself.

The defence secretary must have studied the Abu Ghraib pictures, including a plastic-wrapped corpse of a prisoner beaten to death and the shrouded figure of a man wired for electrocution, but he sounds sanguine. 'I do not see that it is torture: it is abuse,' he tells the Guardian. Though not in the same league as Churchill's statement, in 1920, about the 'excellent moral effect' of gassing Iraqis, this sounds underwhelming.

...there will be additional allegations of "rape and murder," apparently related to the content of the videos, according to NBC News.

New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh indicated as much earlier this week, saying that the videotapes depict sexual abuse of minors. Several reports also cited the existence of videotaped rape involving female prisoners.

NBC News reported further details Friday evening, quoting unnamed sources who said that the unreleased material showed a prisoner being beaten nearly to death, an Iraqi female being raped by American soldiers and male children being raped by Iraqi guards...

...Suhaib al-Baz, journalist for al Jazeerah television told British broadcaster ITV that the pictures were taken as part of a contest among the soldiers at the prison.

"They were enjoying taking photographs of the torture. There was a daily competition to see who could take the most gruesome picture," al-Baz told ITV. "The winner's photo would be stuck on a wall and also put on their laptop computers as a screensaver."

...military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

"'There were 13 year old kids in with us,' Fadi said. 'Sometimes they would throw candies from their humvees, shouting 'Bark like a dog, and I'll throw you the candy'..Some of the small children were crying in the night, asking to go home to their families. We were trying to get them quiet.'

"'Some of the prisoners were criminals, thieves. They put the children with them. Some of them tried to abuse children. We told the guards, they started laughing. One prisoner tried to rape a kid and he refused, so they made a cut on his face."

I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We’ll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.

I remember seeing a news conference where a British journalist complained about the US practice of hooding prisoners as a form of torture. Rumsfeld absolutely ridiculed her. "Hooding?" He asked sarcastically. The torture of POWs at Abu Ghuraib was not carried out by a handful of rogue MPs. It was the result of ordinary practices of US military intelligence, practices that just haven't usually been photographed. Rumsfeld set the tone in which military intelligence felt justified in behaving this way.

"It was not just these six people," Sindar, who shaves his head and wears a large tattoo on his forearm, told Reuters. "Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time."

Ramone Leal, 25, said one female soldier in his unit fired off a slingshot into a crowd of prisoners, injuring one. Another group of soldiers knocked a 14-year-old boy to the ground as he arrived at the prison and then twisted his arm.

"The soldiers were laughing at him," said Leal, who like the others interviewed for this article has since returned to California. "I saw the other soldiers that would take out their frustrations on the prisoners."

...A sergeant in their group was admonished last year after holding down a prisoner for other men to beat, both Leal and Sindar said. They said they saw hooded prisoners with racial taunts written on the hoods such as "camel jockey' or slogans such as "I tried to kill an American but now I'm in jail."

So who were these mysterious "interrogators"? If they were not CIA or FBI staff, who were they? Several names are already doing the rounds - journalists claim they have no final proof - and a number, I understand, hold more than one passport. Why were they brought to Abu Ghraib? Who brought them? How much are they paid? And who trained them?

Who taught them it was a good idea to get a girl to point at an Arab who was being forced to masturbate, to humiliate an Iraqi by hooding him with a girl's lingerie?

We are not just talking "sick" here. We're talking professionals. President Bush at last apologised yesterday to the Arab world for this filth - only, no doubt, because of the latest picture on the front of The Washington Post - but the constant, insistent refrain from US officers that these were a tiny group of unrepresentative Americans makes me very suspicious.

Lynndie and her boyfriend were not part of a "rogue" unit. They were told to do these despicable things. They were encouraged. This was an order from someone. Who? When can we see their pictures, their identity, their passports, their orders?

we have only begun to identify the unspeakable element that unites the invasion of Vietnam with the invasion of Iraq. This element draws together most colonial occupations, no matter where or when. It is the essence of imperialism, a word only now being restored to our dictionaries. It is racism...

...In boasting openly about killing "rats in their nest," US marine snipers, who in Falluja shot dead women, children and the elderly, just as German snipers shot dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, were reflecting the racism of their leaders.

Paul W Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary who is said to be the architect of the invasion of Iraq, has spoken of "snakes" and "draining the swamps" in the "uncivilised parts of the world"...

...BBC commentators - always the best measure of the British establishment thinking on its feet - remind us that the torturing, humiliating of soldiers "does not compare with Saddam Hussein's systematic tortures and executions". Saddam, noted Ahdaf Soueif, "is now the moral compass of the West".

While visiting a Baghdad hospital to film a four-year-old boy whose left hand and left foot had been blown off by an American bomb in Fallujah, I was berated angrily by the father of another child. He was a Shiite who had recently joined Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, and his attention was fixed not on the Sunni refugees but on the foreign interloper. Though we had few words in common, he made clear his view that British troops must get out of Iraq or the consequences would be bloody. He drew his finger across his throat.

A YOUNG Iraqi girl held at Abu Ghraib prison was stripped naked and beaten while her brother heard her scream from another cell, a British television station reported today...

...ITV News quoted al-Baz as saying he saw a 12 or 13-year-old Iraqi girl brought into the prison.

Late at night, he said, she was brought in front of his and other prison cells, naked and screaming. Her brother, held in an upper cell, heard her scream and call out for his help, said al-Baz.

Another time, al-Baz said, he saw a 15-year-old Iraqi boy, who was ill, being forced to hold two heavy cans of water and run up and down a corridor. If the boy stopped, he was beaten with a stick by an American soldier, ITV quoted al-Baz as saying.

"He collapsed from exhaustion, so they stripped him and poured cold water over him," al-Baz said.

Saddam was Worse... If the racist nutters in the American right weren't so evil, you could laugh at them. Today's justification for the torture in Iraq: ''Saddam was Worse''. What a great slogan: ''We're not quite as bad as Saddam''. Too bad they didn't try that sound bite on the world before the war. Some liberators.

"To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised.

"Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.

There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore.

...Abdel Hamid Majed, claimed that his hands were tied tightly, a sack was placed over his head, and he was forced to lay on his stomach inside a shop for six and a half hours while the soldiers were deciding what to do with them.

He said, “We were whispering, ‘Allahu Akbar’ to sustain ourselves, and the soldiers were laughing at us.”

After laughing at the detainees for praying, Abdel (who speaks English) said, a soldier standing over them asked, “Do you want to pray? Pray to me. I am your God.”

Later several of the men were taken to Abu Ghraib. On April 20th, one of the men detained, Dr. Oubaidy Nezar, (a doctor of Physical Chemistry), died at Abu Ghraib prison.

Records obtained by The Independent reveal that this is not the first time that Specialist Graner has been involved in abuse allegations. His ex-wife obtained three separate "temporary protection of abuse" orders from a judge in their home town in Pennsylvania.

There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse.

The latest allegation involved an elderly Iraqi woman said to have been abused by U.S. military guards. The woman, arrested last July, was reportedly put into a harness and forced to crawl on her hands and knees while a guard rode her donkey-style.

   

U.S.: The goverment of Craptopia must stop torturing innocent civilians.

Craptopia: Hey - shut up. You tortured all those people in Iraq.

U.S.: No we didn't. We abused them. That's totally different.

Craptopia: I wish we'd thought of that.

You've got a prisoner who keeps a pistol in his cell, Iraqi guards who are clearly working for the resistance (at one point, a prisoner and his guard escape together), an MP who likes to show off his muscles to the detainees (and almost gets himself torn to shreds in the process) and a senior officer who's allowed to take an off-the-books vacation in Kuwait, no questions asked - or answered. (Taguba: "Temporarily removing one commander and replacing him with another serving Battalion Commander without an order and without notifying superior or subordinate commands is without precedent in my military career.")

The most distressing thing in those photos from Abu Ghraib was also the least remarked upon. That soldier standing over his prostrate prisoners, holding his thumb up, was wearing surgical gloves. Was he afraid of being contaminated by his victims' blood, feces, semen—or just their humanity? We'll never know. But it's an astonishing symbol of what America is becoming: a nation where suffering is tolerable—even pleasurable—as long as the shit doesn't get on our hands.

"It seems that those in power in Washington are unaware of the fact that the Arab pride and dignity are something very precious and that only bloody revenge will bring the victims peace. Accordingly, the day of reckoning will be a hard one... the US must brace itself for more violent acts of retaliation. Families and relatives of the humiliated victims will not rest until they get their revenge on the culprits and their associates."...

One Internet user, presenting himself on Alsaha (in Arabic), as a "resistance" fighter in Iraq, said"our anger and revenge will not be appeased until we pierce the eyes which saw the sexual organs of the Iraqis and until the Americans, British and Israelis are castrated on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers."

America has in the past, at least, been hospitable to critical voices. Criticism can have an impact, and can produce change. But expressing it is not necessarily painless. We have heard too many voices in this country in the past three years who equated criticism to treason, and who attempted to ruin the lives of critics and dissidents. These voices may well have contributed to an atmosphere where the prisoners could be demonized and tortured.

Many Americans, especially Muslim Americans and those on the left, had faced a new equivalent of McCarthyism in recent years. America should have learned its lessons from the original episode of McCarthyism, in the 1950s. President Bush and his ardent partisans need to be reminded that our critics are our friends—they make us a better person. By critiquing one another, and listening to one another, we can make a difference in the world and protect human rights. That is the only way to exorcise the restless ghosts of Abu Ghuraib.

Abuse or Torture? According to the U.S. media, the torture in Iraq isn't torture. It's abuse. I hope Bush can explain the difference when he's being interviewed on Al-Arabiya, because I'm confused. I managed to rattle out a quickie cartoon - I hope this makes it all clear now.

The pictures of US soldiers torturing their captives have the added horror of sexual abuse. In five of the 14 images that the Sunday Herald has seen, a female soldier – identified as Lynndie England, a 21-year-old from a West Virginia trailer park – is playing up to the camera while her captives are tortured.

Other pictures, which the world has not seen, but which are in the hands of the US military, include shots of a dog attacking a prisoner. An accused soldier says dogs are “used for intimidation factors”.

There are also pictures of an apparent male rape. An Iraqi PoW claims that a civilian translator, hired to work in the prison, raped a male juvenile prisoner. He said: “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming ... and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

According to the British soldiers, the military police have found a video of prisoners being thrown from a bridge, and a prisoner was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Although there is a debate about the veracity of the images, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said that if the pictures were real, they were “appalling”.

Susan Karim, an Iraqi exile living in Edinburgh, said there was little difference between the punishment she suffered at the hands of Saddam’s torturers and the treatment of Iraqis by US and UK forces.

Karim was urinated on and made to stand on a chair for hours after being warned that if she fell off she would be electrocuted. “I can’t believe it is happening all over again,” she said. “Nothing has changed, only now there are different faces doing the torturing.”

In a report to be published later this month, Amnesty states that at least four people died in British custody in Basra – one from torture.

...jobs involving torture attract people who like it. Would you crush a man’s testicles because the lieutenant ordered you to? Probably not, or not without misgivings. You might understand the reasoning: “Look, this guy is IRA and he knows where five hundred pounds of Semtex is hidden in downtown London. We have to find out.” The arithmetic is hard to argue. And the terr(orist) can stop the proceedings simply by talking. You might see no choice.

But you would probably prefer to leave it to someone else, for when you were out of earshot.

So you need specialists. Always there are people around who are comfortable with torture and degradation, who just flat enjoy hurting people. They are called “sadists.” They are useful. Note the smile on the face of the little minx who is making the Iraaqi man masturbate for her. She is getting off. It’s fun. Note the expressions of the guys in the pictures. These are special people.

Are U.S. troops today fighting for what Jefferson would recognize as freedom? Or are they fighting for an empire — not only a global military empire, but an enormous domestic system of unconstitutional laws, taxes, regulations, bureaucracies, and general infringements of the freedoms our ancestors took for granted?

The answer is obvious. They are serfs fighting for servitude. They are fighting for the CIA, the FBI, the EPA, OSHA, HUD, the Social Security Administration, the departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Energy, and of course the IRS, to name just a few agencies. President Bush says they are fighting for freedom. Jefferson might put it a little differently.

He's no longer able to silence all the people who know what an incompetent, poorly advised, stupid, lying fool he is.

There are about six billion people on this planet who do know it. And there are about fifty percent of the people in the US who know what a total, incompetent failure Bush is. That leaves the Stupid white men right wing blue collar southerners, the right wing fascist brain-dead Christians and the greedy, short-sighted people earning over $200,000 a year who fail to see that the price they are paying to save a few thousand in taxes is the judicial and economic, spiritual and ecological health of the nation they spend their wealth in.

Watching the dancing, jeering crowd in Waziriya was Nada Abdullah Aboud, a middle-aged woman, dressed in black. ... It turned out that her son, Saad Mohammed, had been the translator for a senior Italian diplomat working for the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority. She said: "My son was driving with the Italian ambassador last September near Tikrit when an American soldier fired at the car and shot him through the heart."

Saad Mohammed was one of a large but unknown number of Iraqis shot down by US troops over the past year. There seems to have been no rational reason why he had been killed. But the high toll of Iraqi civilians shot down after ambushes or at checkpoints has given Iraqis the sense that, at bottom, American soldiers regard them as an inferior people whose lives are not worth very much...

...The tide is going out for the US in Iraq. They were not able to use their military strength against Fallujah and Najaf. They have very little political support outside Kurdistan. They can no longer win. It may be one of the most extraordinary defeats in history.

Alterman said he recently talked with two experts on Iraq who had written books on the country. He declined to name them, but quoted them as saying that Iraq, at the end, "could well look like Somalia, run by warlords, with a lot of violence," saying that his two experts said, "It might never come together at all."

He also said of the bulk of administration officials, "They are very pessimistic."

Veteran CIA Middle East analyst Stan Bedlington said, "I'm afraid the unrealistic policies of this administration will produce another failed state like Somalia. We have all the makings."

AMERICAN guards serially abused Iraqi prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison as a routine part of the US force's interrogation process, according to an internal military report.

The 53-page document written in February talks of numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" in which at least one prisoner died and portrays the problem as more widespread and systemic than initially realised.

In other cases prisoners were sodomised with a chemical light and possibly a broom stick, stripped, forced to wear women's underwear, handcuffed to cell doors, forced into 3ft by 3ft cells and left for up to three days in cells with no water or toilet.

Inmates were also routinely beaten with a chair or broom handle. Some rooms in the prison were found spattered with blood.

Sergeant Frederick said in evidence given to General Taguba's report: "I questioned this and the answer I got was, this is how military intelligence wants it done."

He also described incidents when he said he disagreed with the level of force being used. In one, a man who appeared to be mentally disabled and was singing while standing near a fence was shot with rubber bullets. In another, a man with a broken arm was put in a headlock until he choked.

Sergeant Frederick said he voiced concern to his commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Phillabaum. "His reply was, 'Don't worry about it'."

In letters home, Sergeant Frederick said that MI took an Iraqi to his cell block for questioning. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away," he said.

The dead man was never entered into prison records, so his death was not recorded.

Nicole Choueiry, Middle East spokesman for human rights group Amnesty International, said the group had received "scores" of reports of ill-treatment of detainees by British and American troops.

"We've been documenting allegations of torture for a year now," she said. "We have said there are patterns of torture."

Amnesty says it has received reports of abuse including "prolonged sleep deprivation, beatings, prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music, prolonged hooding, and exposure to bright lights."

Yesterday the mother of one detainee, Samira Hassan, said the latest allegations were horribly familiar.

Her 22-year-old son Abbas had been arrested three months ago while walking past a US military base in the Baghdad suburb of Amariya.

She finally managed to see him in prison two weeks ago. "He told me they are using electric shocks against the prisoners and taking off their clothes. He also told me something I can hardly talk about - that the Americans are raping the Iraqi men.

"My father is an old man. He has a heart complaint. The first thing they did was to make him stand up for 12 hours," he complained. "They then took him to Tikrit and finally to here."

Mr Qahtan said the allegations of abuse by US soldiers were "nothing new". He said he spent 47 days last year in US custody in Tikrit. "Personally they didn't do anything wrong to me," he said. "But I saw for myself what they did to others. They forced a group of prisoners to stand naked on the roof for seven days. They also told us that all Iraqis were shit."