Chicken George and the War

Amendment I


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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Saying U.N. backed war doesn't make it so
WASHINGTON -- President Bush may try to fool the American people with his repeated claim that he invaded Iraq to pursue a "war on terrorism" but he should not try that spin on the world leaders at the United Nations. They know better.

Americans do, too. We don't have such short memories that we've forgotten how the Bush administration previously declared that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction required an invasion.

Bush, who has run out of excuses for the war, now wants everyone to believe that the United Nations gave him the go-ahead to invade Iraq when the world body passed a resolution warning there would be "serious consequences" if Saddam Hussein did not disarm and give weapons inspectors free rein in Iraq. Seattle PI Tuesday September 28, 2004

Senator: Commander Told of Military Drain
WASHINGTON - A former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman asserted Sunday that the general who ran the war in Afghanistan said more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that his resources were being shifted in preparation for taking on Saddam Hussein.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., contends that just months into combat in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks also told him that fighting terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere should take priority over invading Iraq.

Graham said Franks told him he thought the United States knew less about the situation in Iraq than did some European governments, and the Bush administration should ask them for advice. Yahoo News Sunday September 05, 2004

White House blocked probe of Sept. 11-Saudi link: top US senator
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House blocked a congressional investigation into alleged links between the Saudi government and two September 11, 2001, hijackers, a top US senator wrote in a book.

Florida Senator Bob Graham, the Democrat who co-chaired Congress's probe into the September 11 attacks, wrote that Saudi government agents were part of a support network in the United States for two hijackers who took part in the devastating strikes, the Miami Herald reported Sunday.

But President George W. Bush's administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation blocked Congress's investigation into the alleged ties, Graham wrote in "Intelligence Matters," a copy of which the Herald obtained. Yahoo News Sunday September 05, 2004

Win or lose, Bush erred in Iraq
DURING the Republican convention we watched and read about a Republican Party that has drifted further to the right as it desperately tried to obscure the mistake its leaders made in Iraq.

The most evil act that a government can inflict upon its citizens is to force them to kill and be killed in an unjust war. It pushes everyone into a position of being either for or against the war.

The choice is to confront the truth and deal with its terrible implications or sink into a hypernationalistic denial.

The ravings of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, apparently supported by the legal team of the Bush campaign, seem a painful example of this, bringing the specter of Vietnam back into play.

These men seem to be saying: "If the war I gave myself to as a killer was unjust, then what does that make me? I cannot see myself in these terms, so I must believe that what I did was both patriotic and right."

The justification for the war in Iraq has been exhaustively studied and exposed as false by news organizations, scholars, and military personnel not only here but all over the world. Boston Globe Saturday September 04, 2004

Heads in the Sand
When asked this week on CNN how long the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq, Senator John McCain replied "probably" 10 or 20 years. "That's not so bad," he said, adding, "We've been in Korea for 50 years. We've been in West Germany for 50 years."

Reporters have come to expect candor from Senator McCain, and in this case he didn't disappoint. But there weren't any speakers mounting the podium at the Republican National Convention to hammer home the message that G.I.'s would be in Iraq for a decade or two.

That's not the understanding most Americans had when this wretched war was sold to them, and it's not the view most Americans hold now. New York Times Friday September 03, 2004

Blame extends to top for faulty war execution
WASHINGTON -- Reports into the Abu Ghraib prison abuse released this week indict not just the way detainees were handled, but the planning and execution of key aspects of the overall US military enterprise in Iraq.

The nation's leadership, from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on down, failed to anticipate the widespread Iraqi insurgency, according to the reports. The Pentagon failed to adapt quickly enough after the insurgency started. Top generals failed to realize how explosive the Abu Ghraib photos would be. CS Monitor Thursday August 26, 2004

Rumsfeld's War Plan Shares the Blame
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

A report by a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to review the military establishment's role in creating and handling detainee abuse problems at Abu Ghraib prison said that the Iraq war plan he played a key role in shaping helped create the conditions that led to the scandal.

In addition, the four-member panel, which was led by one former defense secretary, James R. Schlesinger, and included another, Harold Brown, found that Rumsfeld's slow response when the Iraqi insurgency flared last summer worsened the situation. Washington Post Wednesday August 25, 2004

US 'gave al-Qaeda a training ground'
The US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake that has turned the country into a giant recruiting ground for terrorists, according to a former adviser to Bill Clinton.

Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told a national security conference in Canberra yesterday that he believed the US had wrongly led Australia into the war.

"As an American, I am deeply grateful for Australia's friendship and its support of the United States, but I fear our Government has led you wrong on this one," said Mr Benjamin, who was director of counter-terrorism in the National Security Council during the Clinton presidency.

Mr Benjamin said that while there had been major successes against al-Qaeda, they had been undermined by US Government policies.

"By invading Iraq, we brought the targets to the killers and we set ourselves what is probably an impossible task - proving our goodwill to Iraqis and, by extension, to the Muslim world at a moment when we had to suppress an insurgency.

"We might have taken away al-Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan, but we have provided jihadists with unparalleled training grounds in Iraq," Mr Benjamin said. The Age Wednesday August 25, 2004

CIA Study on Iraq Weapons Is Off Course, Officials Say
WASHINGTON -- Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.

The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.

The new direction of the inquiry is seen by some officials as an attempt to obscure the fact that no banned weapons -- or even evidence of active programs -- have been found, and instead emphasize theories that Iraq may have been planning to revive its programs.

The change in focus has angered some intelligence officials and at least one key Democrat in Congress and has brought charges of political motivation. LA Times Thursday August 19, 2004

The Ultimate Stupidity: The Attack on Najaf
I have been thinking for months that if those commanding U.S. forces in Iraq really wanted to perform the ultimate stupidity, and ratchet up exponentially the degree of hatred they face in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world---then they'd surely attack the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, or be drawn into a situation where they'd damage it. This is the most important Shiite site in the world, and is holy not only to Shiites (about 120 million people) but also to all the billion-plus Muslims on the planet. It sits atop the tomb of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, fourth caliph ("successor" of Muhammed and political and religious leader of the expanding Muslim world), assassinated by opponents in 661. Ali's partisans supported his son Hussein as next caliph, but Umayyad foes defeated Hussein and 72 followers in battle at Karbala in 680, their martyrdoms producing the enduring division between Sunni and Shia Islam. Counterpunch Tuesday August 17, 2004

The Nuclear Shadow
If a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear weapon explodes beside the New York Stock Exchange or the U.S. Capitol, or in Times Square, as many nuclear experts believe is likely in the next decade, then the next 9/11 commission will write a devastating critique of how we allowed that to happen.

As I wrote in my last column, there is a general conviction among many experts - though, in fairness, not all - that nuclear terrorism has a better-than-even chance of occurring in the next 10 years. Such an attack could kill 500,000 people.

Yet U.S. politicians have utterly failed to face up to the danger. New York Times Saturday August 14, 2004

Najaf assault turns allies against US
Former US ally and president of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, has lost faith in the US-led occupation.

When the US wanted a Shia cleric to strengthen the credibility of the IGC, it turned to Bahr al-Ulum, whose family had lost many members for opposing Saddam Hussein.

But watching his hometown of Najaf come under US bombardment to crush Muqtada al-Sadr and his supporters, Bahr al-Ulum has lost faith in US intentions towards Iraq, and says millions of moderates like him, who welcomed last year's invasion, now regard Washington as an enemy. Al Jazeera Saturday August 14, 2004

'Star Wars': Pie in the Sky
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- This year, more than two decades after President Reagan delivered his "Star Wars" speech and initiated a crusade to protect America against missile attacks, the United States will finally deploy the first component of a national missile defense.

If ever there was a case of wasted defense spending, missile defense is it. LA Times Saturday August 14, 2004

Rumsfeld and Bush Failed Us on Sept. 11
Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief opponents of investing real power over purse and personnel in a new national intelligence chief, told the 9/11 commission that an intelligence czar would do the nation "a great disservice." It is fair to ask what kind of service Rumsfeld provided on the day the nation was under catastrophic attack.

"Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, one of the widows known as the Jersey Girls, whose efforts helped create and guide the 9/11 commission. LA Times Friday August 13, 2004

A catalogue of violations
Human rights violations in Iraq are a prime example of the magnitude of the injustice dual standards have inflicted on the Iraqi people. The history of modern Iraq, from its establishment following World War II to the present day, is the story of a human catastrophe in which structural and functional imbalances have invariably bred deviant human rights behaviour among the rulers, and not infrequently among the ruled. This article will attempt to shed some light on the forms of human rights abuses under the US-British occupation of Iraq. Al-Ahram Thursday August 12, 2004

Diplomacy sidelined as US targets Iran
The US charge sheet against Iran is lengthening almost by the day, presaging destabilising confrontations this autumn and maybe a pre-election October surprise.

The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran's decision to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.

The US will ask a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on September 13 to declare Iran in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a prelude to seeking punitive UN sanctions. Guardian Tuesday August 10, 2004

The 9/11 unstated indictment
As the price of bipartisan unanimity, the 9/11 Commission Report assiduously avoids apportioning blame to individuals, or naming names. But no one who has actually read the report can miss its searing indictment. The text of the report documents in devastating detail the failures of President Bush to defend Americans from the next terrorist attack.

While the report falls silent when it reaches the point of issuing an explicit indictment, the bill of particulars it presents stretches from to A to Z. According to the commissioners (five Republicans and five Democrats) the Bush administration's so-called "War on Terrorism" has failed:

To identify the enemy clearly. According to the commission, terrorism is a tactic; the real enemy is not terrorism, but Islamic extremists and their roots in an ideology that twists minds and inspires suicide bombings. Seattle PI Tuesday August 10, 2004

Wounded Soldiers Are Adapting to Altered Lives
Archie Staley sat on a silver stool in a small office in the depths of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and stared straight into the eyes of Vince A. Przybyla Jr.

Staley is 20 years old, a U.S. Army tank driver with a quick wit and an accent lush with the tones of the mountains of western North Carolina, where he grew up. Staley was nearly killed when a mortar round exploded and blew him 15 feet into the air on a roadside north of Baghdad on Easter Sunday. He lost his left eye and his face was crushed, burned and scarred by shrapnel, which also pierced his neck, cutting his carotid artery.

Every war has its toll, measured in stark numbers representing those who are killed and wounded. But the numbers don't show the emotional toll of war, the impact each death has on families and the life changes forced on those who suddenly find themselves without a leg to walk on, a hand to button a shirt or lace a shoe, or a lung to catch a breath. Washington Post Tuesday August 10, 2004

Back Home, Disabled Vets Fight Injuries, Red Tape
MANASSAS PARK, Va. -- The yellow ribbons are faded and fraying outside the neatly appointed house where Jay Briseno lies tethered to a respirator, his nearly motionless, 21-year-old body a shrunken shadow of the young man who last year went marching off to war.

Shot in the back of the neck in Baghdad on a sweltering afternoon in June 2003, Briseno was rushed with all the speed and efficiency the Army could muster to one hospital after another, brought back from multiple heart attacks and strokes.

But Briseno isn't a soldier anymore. He is a veteran, facing a lifetime of excruciating disability. The efficient war-fighting machine he was a part of has moved on. His care is left to his parents and sisters, who, bent over his bed day and night, are struggling to adjust.

For Briseno and his family ? as for thousands of others wounded in the Iraq war ? the transition from the life they knew as soldiers to a future as disabled veterans is filled with frustration and pain. The military is more efficient than ever in treating its wounded. But after the battle-scarred leave Army hospitals, they often find themselves on their own in an unfamiliar and difficult-to-navigate thicket of benefits and services. LA Times Sunday August 08, 2004

Iran intent on being a nuclear threat
The invasion of Iraq, which President George Bush has often said would help stabilize the Middle East, is now hindering efforts to deal with a real nuclear threat: Iran. Despite its ritualistic denials, Iran gives every indication of building all the essential elements of a nuclear weapons program. And while the United States has hoped to pressure Iran into halting that program, the government in Tehran has clearly concluded that it has little to fear for now from an American government whose diplomatic credibility has been damaged and whose military capacities have been stretched by the war in Iraq. Toronto Star Saturday August 07, 2004

Washington's Gift to Bomb Makers
There is no bigger and more urgent threat to the security of every American than the possibility of nuclear bomb materials falling into the wrong hands. That is why it is astonishing, and frightening, that the Bush administration is now pushing to strip the teeth from a proposed new treaty aimed at expanding the current international bans on the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. With talks on the new treaty set to begin later this year, the administration suddenly announced last week that it would insist that no provisions for inspections or verification be included. New York Times Friday August 06, 2004

US abuse could be war crime
Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said yesterday.

The organisation, which maintains a rigidly neutral stance in public, took the unusual step of voicing its concerns in uncompromising language after the former detainees, known as the Tipton Three, revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody. Guardian Thursday August 05, 2004

$1.9 Billion of Iraq's Money Goes to U.S. Contractors
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. Washington Post Wednesday August 04, 2004

Mr. Bush's Wrong Solution
At a time when Americans need strong leadership and bold action, President Bush offered tired nostrums and bureaucratic half-measures yesterday. He wanted to appear to be embracing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, but he actually rejected the panel's most significant ideas, and thus missed a chance to confront the twin burdens he faces at this late point in his term: the need to get intelligence reform moving whether he's re-elected or not, and the equally urgent need to repair the government's credibility on national security. New York Times Tuesday August 03, 2004

Iraqi group claims over 37,000 civilian toll
An Iraqi political group says more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 and October 2003.

The People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony, movement said in a statement that it carried out a detailed survey of Iraqi civilian fatalities during September and October 2003.

Its calculation was based on deaths among the Iraqi civilian population only, and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. Al Jazeera Sunday August 01, 2004

Why the US granted 'protected' status to Iranian terrorists
The US State Department officially considers a group of 3,800 Marxist Iranian rebels - who once killed several Americans and was supported by Saddam Hussein - "terrorists."

But the same group, under American guard in an Iraqi camp, was just accorded a new status by the Pentagon: "protected persons" under the Geneva Convention.

This strange twist, analysts say, underscores the divisions in Washington over US strategy in the Middle East and the war against terrorism. It's also a function of the swiftly deteriorating US-Iran dynamic, and a victory for US hawks who favor using the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization (MKO) or "People's Holy Warriors," as a tool against Iran's clerical regime. CS Monitor Thursday July 29, 2004

Bush's 9/11 Farce
BOSTON -- Back before Jonas Salk developed his polio vaccine in 1952, summer could be a bad time for America's children. The fear of polio often kept them indoors, away from the beach or out of the pool. So it came as something of a surprise when the government somehow ran out of the vaccine and the secretary of health, education and welfare, Oveta Culp Hobby, uttered one of the great dumb remarks of American history: "No one could have foreseen the public demand for the vaccine."

The spirit of Mrs. Hobby lives on in George W. Bush. Almost three years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 -- the biggest intelligence failure in U.S. history -- and after his own administration went to war for reasons that did not exist, the president has ordered his crack staff to see which of the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations can be implemented fast and without congressional approval. Washington Post Tuesday July 27, 2004

Regime change in Iran now in Bush's sights
PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.

The official said: "If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran." Sunday Herald Tuesday July 20, 2004

Exactly How Has Bush's War Made Us Safer?
President Bush claims that his war on Iraq has made Americans safer. His primary rationale is that by removing from power a foreign dictator who was supposedly bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Americans are safer as a result. Unfortunately for the American people, however, Bush's reasoning is both false and fallacious. FFF Tuesday July 20, 2004

If Bush Has Plans For Another Preemptive War, He Should Forget It
WASHINGTON -- If President Bush has any grand plan for another preemptive war, he had better forget it.

Bush has crash landed on the fallacy of the invasion of Iraq. It will take time for the self-described "war president" to make a recovery.

It brings to mind an old saying: "Some day they will give a war and nobody will come." WLKY Monday July 19, 2004

Perception Gap in Iraq
Iraq's newly empowered politicians have not stemmed the violence and instability in their country. But nearly three weeks of partial sovereignty may have helped the Bush administration's drive to reduce its political vulnerability on Iraq at home.

Reducing that vulnerability is now the White House's most urgent goal. What happened at the June 28 handover ceremony in Baghdad was not so much a transfer of sovereignty as it was a transfer of political responsibility -- from President Bush to a willing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Allawi has kept his part of the bargain with Washington by repeatedly appearing before U.S. television cameras on two missions: to thank Bush for freeing Iraq and to take on the responsibility for answering attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqis. Washington Post Thursday July 15, 2004

The Latest Bush Doctrine
Britain's report on the prewar intelligence assessment of the Iraqi threat is in and it reached basically the same conclusions as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: the intelligence was seriously flawed and Iraq had no usable weapons of mass destruction.

Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately accepted ?personal responsibility.?

President Bush has taken not one ounce of personal responsibility for the failings of our intelligence. Pathetically, that is the custom in American politics, but it still reflects poorly on the president. CBS Thursday July 15, 2004

Duped by the neo-cons
AMONG the various rationales the Bush administration has given for invading Iraq 16 months ago, the most compelling to the American people was always the claim of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. The September11 attacks left Americans angry, frightened, and ready for justified revenge.

If Saddam was in league with the al-Qa'ida terrorists who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks and a bad guy to begin with, surely it made eminent sense to take him out. As one White House adviser recently told The New York Times: "If you discount the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida, then you discount the proposition that [the Iraq war] is part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it - some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?" The Australian Thursday July 15, 2004

U.S. intelligence on Iraq: Cheney just won't let it go
(KRT) - Late last week, yet another august body - this time the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - issued yet another massive report again confirming that the U.S. intelligence establishment got just about everything wrong when it came to Saddam Hussein's nonexistent biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

But buried deep in the Senate report - little noticed and even less remarked upon - is something important that the committee credits the intelligence community for getting right. And it puts the torch to whatever flimsy tissue of credibility the Bush administration had left:

With respect to contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda during the 1990s, the committee found that the CIA "reasonably assessed ... that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship." News-Sentinal Thursday July 15, 2004

The Erosion of the Rationales
With a bipartisan Senate committee report exposing colossal blunders by the intelligence community in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the political debate over whether the United States went to war on false pretenses took another turn for the worse for the Bush White House.

The White House spin on the report was to stress its conclusion that the CIA came to its unfounded claims about Iraqi weaponry without any obvious White House coercion.

But blaming the CIA has strategic pitfalls for a White House that is still asserting its decisive leadership -- including its right to preemptive war based on intelligence findings -- and hasn't really admitted it made any mistakes in the first place. Washington Post Monday July 12, 2004

Fact of the Matter Is That Facts Didn't Matter
Well, the CIA managed, barely, to get one thing right on Iraq: There never was a case for linking Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden or the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a key rationale for President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

In an otherwise scathing report on how American intelligence agencies fell for misinformation that touted Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States, the Senate Intelligence Committee went out of its way to endorse the CIA finding that "the intelligence community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other Al Qaeda strike." LA Times Monday July 12, 2004

PAKISTAN FOR BUSH. July Surprise?
Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his administration was implementing a plan to insure the public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda. The New Republic Thursday July 08, 2004

20/20 HINDSIGHT IN IRAQ
NEW YORK -- Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an obsessive architect of the war in Iraq, appeared before Congress last week to say that the big problem out there is cowardly reporters afraid to leave Baghdad to find out how well the Bush-driven liberators are doing these days. That, finally, seemed to get the press's attention about our own role in all this.

To begin with, at least 35 very brave reporters have been killed in Wolfowitz's excellent adventure. That means, among other things, that it has been much more dangerous to be a journalist in Iraq then to be an American soldier or Marine. Yahoo News Thursday July 08, 2004

U.S. must get out of Iraq or draft will soon follow
Reuters carried a Pentagon announcement that was published in American papers on Saturday, July 3: "U.S. warns Americans to leave Bahrain."

It was not a subtle hint for families to leave if they feel insecure; it was "a mandatory evacuation order for non-emergency American defense employees and family members of American military."

This is not some obscure outpost; this is the home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. Capital Times Wednesday July 07, 2004

Cold War ideology doesn't work
Why was the U.S. occupation of Iraq such a disaster? Supporters of the invasion insist that all would have been well had it not been for poor planning and penny-pinching. But the real causes are more deep-seated. The Americans have failed because they are in thrall to a militant cold warrior ideology.

And as long as it retains its influence in the White House, the United States will stumble from failure to failure. Seattle PI Wednesday July 07, 2004

Ill-Serving Those Who Serve
The Pentagon's decision to press 5,600 honorably discharged soldiers back into service, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the latest example of President Bush's refusal to face the true costs of pre-emptive war. As with other stopgap measures to paper over the poor planning of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, this one demands more from those who have already given the most: volunteer soldiers and their families. And because this call-up comes uncomfortably close to conscription, it highlights more than other emergency deployments the callousness of the administration's failure to budget for an adequate number of ground troops. NY Times Tuesday July 06, 2004

FBI Delays Interviews in Fighting Terror Plot
WASHINGTON -- More than a month ago, the FBI announced it would launch a wave of interviews across the country as part of an urgent effort to root out a suspected terrorist attack planned for the U.S. this summer.

Preparations for the attack were 90% complete, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said at the time. Preparations for the interviews are another story. It's already July, and the FBI is still weeks away from launching the initiative, law enforcement officials confirm. LA Times Monday July 05, 2004

NOW with Bill Moyers
BRANCACCIO: Welcome to NOW. Tonight we're going to talk about our troops wounded in Iraq. Just today President Bush visited an army base and then a military hospital in the state of Washington, trying to boost morale.

But a NOW investigation has found the Pentagon is not telling the public the whole story about how many soldiers are being injured on a daily basis. PBS Monday July 05, 2004

Add `sovereignty' to Bush's grand illusions about Iraq
PRIME MINISTER Iyad Allawi and his companions in Iraq's transitional government must be wondering what kind of used car they have bought from the Bush administration. They have a sovereignty that is so limited that they do not control their country's air space or its ports. The security forces they do control are so limited, undertrained, and untested that Iraq's new leaders are completely dependent on foreign soldiers even for their very lives.

They are being asked to rule a country that has been so reduced by the incompetence of the Americans that very few lights turn on at night in the capital, and security is so bad that US proconsul Paul Bremer had to creep away in a stealth handover, thus denying the Iraqis the ceremonial dignity of the raising of the flag in the full view of the Iraqi nation. Boston Globe Friday July 02, 2004

Decision Not to Explore Quashed FBI Investigations Prior to 9/11 Tarnishes Hearings
At the twelfth and final public session of the 9/11 commission hearings this week in the NTSB building in Washington, DC, the disappointment was palpable among family members of the 9/11 deceased. A less-than distinguished panel of FBI and CIA agents took turns praising the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Al-Qaeda, and offered little hope that future efforts would be successful in stopping terrorism. But give the CIA and FBI this: they can still recognize a marketing opportunity when they see it. Counterpunch Friday July 02, 2004

Studies Reveal Holes in Port Security Safety Plans
WASHINGTON - July 2 - As the deadline for U.S. ships and ports to be in compliance with international security standards arrives this week, a GAO report finds that the Bush administration is not only ill-prepared for this week's deadline, but is also ignoring Coast Guard estimates on the cost of port security. By allocating a fraction of what will be needed to protect America's port towards proper security, and leaving many ports un-inspected by security officials, the administration is leaving the country open to possible attack. Common Dreams Friday July 02, 2004

CIA Felt Pressure to Alter Iraq Data, Author Says
WASHINGTON -- In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA analysts were ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence assessments concluded that Al Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq, according to a veteran CIA counter-terrorism official who has written a book that is sharply critical of the decision to go to war with Iraq.

Agency analysts never altered their conclusions, but saw the pressure to revisit their work as a clear indication that Bush administration officials were seeking a different answer regarding Iraq and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the CIA officer said in an interview with The Times. Common Dreams Friday July 02, 2004

Iraq is worse off than before the war began, GAO reports
WASHINGTON - In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday. Real Cities Thursday July 01, 2004

Rethinking the American Mission
It is becoming clear to conservatives, neoconservatives and liberals in Washington, and to the majority of Americans outside the beltway, that George W. Bush's Iraq adventure is the wrong war at the wrong time. Military Week Thursday July 01, 2004

Iraq won't be paying for itself
U.S. officials announced with much fanfare in January that a new and improved Baghdad stock exchange would be up and running by the end of the month, signaling a turning point in Iraq's economic revitalization.

As of Tuesday, a day after those same officials handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis in a small, secret ceremony, the Baghdad bourse was still closed for business, a fitting symbol for the economic morass that will haunt the Iraqis -- and us -- for years to come. SF Chronicle Thursday July 01, 2004

The Costs of Bush's War
The Bush Administration, in a stealthy move designed to minimize anticipated insurgent attacks, yesterday handed "sovereignty" to Iraq's interim government two days before it had been scheduled to do so on June 30th.

The premature hand-off--or what might be called a sovereignty scam--means that the Bush Team's PR offensive is certain to kick into high gear in the coming weeks. (When Bush learned that Paul Bremer had formally relinquished his authority to the Iraqi government, he added an Orwellian touch to a hand-written note that his national security advisor Condi Rice had just sent him. His note said: "Let Freedom Reign!")

Now more than at any time since Bush invaded Iraq, journalists need to give Americans a clear assessment of the mounting costs of this war. The Nation Wednesday June 30, 2004

Stress Disorders Hit U.S. Troops in Iraq -Study
BOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly a fifth of U.S. troops returning from the war in Iraq may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems, but many are not seeking treatment, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The study, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, is one of a very few that have examined the psychological impact of war so close to the time of deployment. It has already begun to reshape how soldiers are treated, both in the field and after they return home, researchers said. Reuters Wednesday June 30, 2004

Who Lost Iraq?
The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong. New York Times Tuesday June 29, 2004

Poor performance on Guantánamo
Great that the attorney general has spoken up against the proposed sham trial system in Guantánamo Bay, and that Tony Blair is said to be campaigning for the release of the remaining British nationals (Report, June 26). But what about the British residents still languishing there?

Bisher al-Rawi, for example, was educated in this country, and lived here for over 20 years. His family fled here from Iraq in the 1980s after being persecuted by Saddam Hussein. Bisher was kidnapped by the Americans while on a business trip to Gambia. Guardian Monday June 28, 2004

Quick school fixes won few Iraqi hearts
BAGHDAD -- The US government lists renovations done on 2,356 Iraqi schools in a $70 million effort as one of its major accomplishments. The idea behind it was to meet a pressing Iraqi need and quickly win goodwill from a wide swath of the population.

But many Iraqis, like Mustafa Ibrahim al-Jubari, weren't won over. Mr. Jubari is the deputy principal of the Zam Zam elementary school (named after a sacred freshwater well in Mecca). His two-story building in northern Baghdad smells far from fresh. Jubari points to a four-month-old paint job already peeling, a roof that was caulked but leaks, and new porcelain toilet bowls installed on top of backed-up sewage lines. "You're lucky that school has been out for a few weeks,'' he says. "When they're here, the whole place stinks." CS Monitor Monday June 28, 2004

The Neo-cons' Manufactured Case for War
Stefan Halper, director of the Donner Atlantic Studies Program at Cambridge University, was a White House official in the Nixon and Ford administrations and a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Reagan. Jonathan Clarke is a Cato Institute foreign affairs scholar and a former counselor in the British Diplomatic Service. This article was extracted with the authors' permission from their new book, Cato Monday June 28, 2004

Abu Ghraib 'a win' for terrorists
The "repulsive" abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib jail handed terrorists the "single most damaging propaganda victory", Tony Blair told Channel 4. In an interview to mark the handover of power in Iraq two days early, the prime minister also denied the coalition had been "bounced out" of Iraq.

At a low-key ceremony in Baghdad, US administrator Paul Bremer transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi judge.

The move was announced at a Nato summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday. BBC Monday June 28, 2004

The Disaster of Failed Policy
In its scale and intent, President Bush's war against Iraq was something new and radical: a premeditated decision to invade, occupy and topple the government of a country that was no imminent threat to the United States. This was not a handful of GIs sent to overthrow Panamanian thug Manuel Noriega or to oust a new Marxist government in tiny Grenada. It was the dispatch of more than 100,000 U.S. troops to implement Bush's post-Sept. 11 doctrine of preemption, one whose dangers President John Quincy Adams understood when he said the United States "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." LA Tiimes Sunday June 27, 2004

'Failure to account' for Iraq cash
Iraqi money cannot be accounted for by occupying forces responsible for the funds, according to two new reports. Discrepancies are highlighted in the handling of $20bn (?11bn) generated from Iraq's oil and other sources since war ended last year. BBC Sunday June 27, 2004

Memo lists acceptable 'aggressive' interrogation methods
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department spelled out specific interrogation methods that the CIA could use against top al-Qaeda members in a still-classified August 2002 legal memo, issued as the spy agency pressed terrorism suspects about possible strikes on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, current and former Justice officials said.

CIA officials had demanded specific guidance for handling "high-value al-Qaeda captives," said a former Justice official who worked on the memo. The techniques discussed were "aggressive" but "lawful," the former official said. A current Justice official who knows the memo's contents said it specifically authorized the CIA to use "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he is suffocating. USA Today Sunday June 27, 2004

The Paper Trail
This one you'll want to print and save for future reference. In the past year and half, America has witnessed firsthand what happens when politicians distort intelligence information or use it irresponsibly. In his push for war, President Bush manipulated facts, gave credence to false claims and knowingly advanced unproven information to the American public. Here, national security expert John Prados follows the president's paper trail step by deceptive step. Tom Paine Friday June 25, 2004

Bush, Torture and American Values in Iraq
During his invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush warned Iraqis about their treatment of American prisoners of war on 23 March 2003: "I expect them to be treated, the POWs, I expect to be treated humanely, just like we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals." Counterbias Wednesday June 23, 2004

Afghan detainees routinely tortured and humiliated by US troops
Detainees held in Afghanistan by American troops have been routinely tortured and humiliated as part of the interrogation process, in the same way as those in Iraq, a Guardian investigation has found. Five detainees have died in custody, three of them in suspicious circumstances, and survivors have told stories of beatings, strippings, hoodings and sleep deprivation. Guardian Wednesday June 23, 2004

Losing battle? / Staying the course with NATO in Afghanistan
It is a grim truth that, unless matters in Afghanistan turn around rapidly, it will become within the next few months an embarrassing defeat for the United States and for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Post-Gazette Wednesday June 23, 2004

U.S. Approved Use of Dogs Against Prisoners
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said he has never ordered the torture of Iraqi or al Qaeda prisoners as the White House on Tuesday released secret documents showing the use of dogs to induce fear was approved among interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay and then abandoned. Reuters Tuesday June 22, 2004

'No top terrorists at Guantanamo'
Senior American intelligence and military officials directly contradicted the Bush administration yesterday, saying not a single detainee at Guantanamo Bay was a high-ranking terrorist.

The administration has consistently defended indefinite detention at Guantanamo - a legal black hole thanks to its status as a United States naval base on Cuban soil - by calling the 595 inmates "the worst of a very bad lot". Telegraph Tuesday June 22, 2004

Amnesty slams Gulf rights record
The US-led "War on Terror" has had a "profound and far-reaching impact" on human rights in the Gulf region, says an Amnesty International report. The organisation says Gulf states, along with the US, show a "disturbing disregard for the rule of law and fundamental human rights standards". It says a region whose rights record had been improving was now using the war as a cover for repression. BBC Tuesday June 22, 2004

Bush Flirts with Nuclear Disaster, Kennedy Says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) has turned back years of U.S. efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons and has made the world a more dangerous place, one of the Senate's leading liberals said on Tuesday. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, called the last four years of nuclear policy under Bush "a constant flirtation with nuclear disaster" that has rejected a "half century of success" in nuclear deterrence and steps toward disarmament. Yahoo News Tuesday June 22, 2004

Emergency Law for Iraq's 'Democracy'
CAIRO, 22 June 2004 -- Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has appointed a ministerial panel to study whether Iraqis should be subjected to curfews and bans on public demonstrations after the June 30 handover. If Iraqis wake up to emergency law on July 1, instead of the promised and much vaunted "freedom and democracy", the move will surely symbolize America's failed policies in the region like no other. Arab News Monday June 21, 2004

Using and Abusing 9/11 Fears to Set National Security Policy
During a Senate debate last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) reached for the most powerful weapon in any argument over national security for nearly the last three years. The issue was a proposal from Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) to bar private contractors from interrogating military prisoners. Dodd played his high card by arguing that such a ban could reduce the odds of another black eye for America such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. But Sessions trumped him by suggesting the ban might increase the chances of another terrorist attack such as Sept. 11. LA Times Monday June 21, 2004

Torture Policy (cont'd)
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed dismay on Thursday about editorials in which "the implication is that the United States government has, in one way or another, ordered, authorized, permitted, tolerated torture." Such reports, he said, raised questions among U.S. troops in Iraq, reduced the willingness of people in Iraq and Afghanistan to cooperate with the United States, and could be used by others as an excuse to torture U.S. soldiers or civilians. This was wrong, he said, because "I have not seen anything that suggests that a senior civilian or military official of the United States of America . . . could be characterized as ordering or authorizing or permitting torture or acts that are inconsistent with our international treaty obligations or our laws or our values as a country." Washington Post Monday June 21, 2004

Fighting a War in Name Only
According to President Bush, the global war on terror is the central event of our time, comparable "to the great struggles of the last century." As prior generations confronted the challenges of Nazism and Stalinism, so destiny summons the present generation to defeat global terror. This has become America's mission ? to "defend the peace through the forward march of freedom."

Yet peeling back the rhetoric reveals a different story. By historical standards, the enterprise that some have described as another world war has turned out to be a niggling affair. Bush has asked nothing and required nothing of Americans. And nothing pretty much describes what we've anted up to support the cause. LA Tiimes Monday June 21, 2004

U.S. Said to Overstate Value of Guantánamo Detainees
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, June 19 -- For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- "the worst of a very bad lot," Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.

The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.

But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided. New York Times Monday June 21, 2004

Iraq: The Greatest Ever Failure in US Foreign Policy
BAGHDAD, 20 June 2004 ? An Iraqi friend who feared for his life because he was close to the Americans used to live inside the Green Zone, the heavily protected area in central Baghdad where the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has its headquarters. One day he fell into conversation with an American soldier guarding one of the gates. The soldier said he was of Iraqi origin and could speak Arabic. He added that security was not quite as tight as it looked since prostitutes were regular visitors to the zone.

My friend, a little alarmed about this, decided to investigate. He went to a house being used as a brothel. Arab News Sunday June 20, 2004

Mistakes Loom Large as Handover Nears
BAGHDAD -- The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority. Washington Post Sunday June 20, 2004

Iraq Is a Hub for Terrorism, However You Define It
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A superpower invaded an impoverished Islamic nation. Guerrillas responded with AK-47's and rocket-propelled grenades. A generation of warriors was born, eager to wage jihad.

"Unfortunately Iraq has become a cause cél?bre for radical jihadists the way that Afghanistan did a decade and a half ago," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation. "You've got a lot of the same conditions that allowed Afghanistan to become a hub for terrorists." New York Times Saturday June 19, 2004

Show Us the Proof
When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history. New York Times Saturday June 19, 2004

Clinton: I told Bush of bin Laden and he changed the subject
BILL Clinton claims that he warned President George Bush before he took office that the biggest threat to national security was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, in a sensational passage from his memoirs revealed for the first time yesterday. Scotsman Friday June 18, 2004

War on what?
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks has finally spelled it out for President George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues at the Pentagon, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his buds at the State department and the American public: There was no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Working for Change Friday June 18, 2004

Pelosi: 'Bush Administration Misrepresents Depth of Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship'
WASHINGTON, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement today after Vice President Cheney's mischaracterization of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda:

"For nearly three years, the Bush Administration has misrepresented the depth of the relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda. They continue to do so, even after the 9/11 Commission concluded this week that there is no evidence of a working association between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite evidence of some contacts over a 10-year period. Boston Globe Friday June 18, 2004

Hiding the gulag
AS THE PRISONER-abuse scandal in Iraq spirals out of control, it?s all too easy to forget that just last month, the Supreme Court heard three cases concerning the rights of "enemy combatants" being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in US Naval brigs off the American coast. One issue at stake in these cases is whether the government ? specifically President Bush ? should be trusted to handle prisoners in an appropriate manner. Boston Phoenix Friday June 18, 2004

"In A World of S***"
A remarkable briefing yesterday at the Middle East Institute by Ahmed S. Hashim, a Naval War College professor just returned from Iraq, painted in broad outlines the potentially catastrophic situation that the Bush administration faces in Iraq the next few months. With polls showing that just two percent of Iraqis view the United States as ?liberators,? Hashim?s report was sobering indeed. Making it clear that he was speaking only for himself, and not for any U.S. government body, Hashim said, ?We went into Iraq with ideological lenses.? U.S. war planners avoided thinking about the worst that could happen, he said. ?If you start with a rosy scenario and work backward, you?re in a world of shit. And that?s where we are.? Tom Paine Friday June 18, 2004

Pressure at Iraqi prison detailed
The officer who oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad testified that he was under intense "pressure" from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees, pressure that he said included a visit to the prison by an aide to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Yahoo News Friday June 18, 2004

The dogs of war
DOGS HAVE been such a hideous instrument of state terror that their use on Iraqi prisoners is cause alone for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

Nazis used dogs for everything from intimidation to eating people alive. Bull Connor's dogs in Birmingham were an icon of the 1960s. South African police used dogs to enforce apartheid.

In 2002 Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs to inspire fear in detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Boston Globe Friday June 18, 2004

No link / The 9-11 commission staff's disagreement with Bush
The resumed hearings and preliminary staff reports of the September 11 commission are producing some shocking, hitherto not public, information regarding the 2001 attacks.

The information is also undercutting a key theme and repeated message of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- that there was cooperation between al-Qaida, which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Post-Gazette Friday June 18, 2004

Torture Policy
SLOWLY, AND IN spite of systematic stonewalling by the Bush administration, it is becoming clearer why a group of military guards at Abu Ghraib prison tortured Iraqis in the ways depicted in those infamous photographs. President Bush and his spokesmen shamefully cling to the myth that the guards were rogues acting on their own. Yet over the past month we have learned that much of what the guards did -- from threatening prisoners with dogs, to stripping them naked, to forcing them to wear women's underwear -- had been practiced at U.S. military prisons elsewhere in the world. Moreover, most of these techniques were sanctioned by senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Iraqi theater command under Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. Many were imported to Iraq by another senior officer, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. Washington Post Wednesday June 16, 2004

Nation Builders and Low Bidders in Iraq
WASHINGTON -- From the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison to the mutilation of American civilians at Falluja, many of the worst moments of the Iraqi occupation have involved private military contractors "outsourced" by the Pentagon. With no public or Congressional oversight, the Pentagon has paid billions of dollars to companies that now have as many as 20,000 employees carrying out military functions ranging from logistics and troop training to convoy escort and interrogations. Yet despite the problems and the widespread accusations of overbilling, it appears the civilian leadership at the Pentagon has learned absolutely nothing from the whole experience. New York Times Tuesday June 15, 2004

Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders
WASHINGTON, June 12 -- The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials. Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said. New York Times Saturday June 12, 2004

The consent of the Kurds
JUST WHEN it seemed they might have put an end to their long skein of blunders in Iraq, President Bush and his advisers, bowing to pressure from the preeminent Shi'ite, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sabotaged the interim Iraqi constitution they had trumpeted as America's democratic gift to Iraqis. Boston Globe Friday June 11, 2004

Bunker mentality
AT A TIME when the United States should be doing everything possible to rid the world of nuclear weapons, it defies common sense for the Bush administration to push for a new generation of such arms. The justification for nuclear weapons as a counter to the Soviet Union's conventional and nuclear forces ended with that country's collapse. The administration will only encourage proliferation by pursuing proposals for new, low-yield mininukes and "bunker buster" bombs. Boston Globe Wednesday June 09, 2004

The Wrong Proliferation Message
As the world's strongest nuclear and conventional power, America should want to freeze weapons development and halt nuclear proliferation. Yet the Bush administration's proposed military budget moves in a different and more dangerous direction by seeking a sharp increase in the funds for research on two new kinds of nuclear bombs. The Senate should halt this reckless folly by voting next week for an amendment sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein. New York Times Tuesday June 08, 2004

US 'not bound by torture laws'
A Pentagon report last year argued that President George W Bush was not bound by laws banning the use of torture, according to the Wall Street Journal. The document also argued that torturers acting under presidential orders could not be prosecuted, the paper said. The report was written by military and civilian lawyers for US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It came after staff at Guantanamo Bay complained normal interrogation tactics were not eliciting enough information. BBC Monday June 07, 2004

U.S. Only Wounded Itself When It Betrayed Chalabi
The recent reports detailing the alleged perfidy of Ahmad Chalabi actually say much more about his accusers in the U.S. government than they do about Chalabi himself. They reveal Washington as a faithless friend and its agencies as more concerned with carrying out vendettas than with pursuing the real enemies of the United States.
But that is starting at the end of the story. LA Times Friday June 04, 2004

A Hollow Sovereignty for Iraq
President Bush said yesterday that he would transfer "complete and full sovereignty" to an interim Iraqi government in barely a month. But nothing even close to that is likely to happen. Recent developments suggest that this "sovereignty" will have little substance and that the president still has no coherent plan to create the security and political trust required to negotiate a constitution and hold fair elections. The sovereignty timetable remains driven by the American electoral calendar and growing Iraqi impatience with an incompetent and deeply unpopular occupation. NY Times Saturday May 29, 2004

A Real Nuclear Danger
While the Bush administration has been distracted by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it has neglected the far more urgent threat to American security from dangerous nuclear materials that must be safeguarded before they can fall into the hands of terrorists. That is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from a new report that documents the slow pace of protecting potential nuclear bomb material at loosely guarded sites around the world. NY Times Friday May 28, 2004

U.S. war policy 'grave error'
LONDON, England--One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as "a grave error." Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure. "I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Boar Thursday May 27, 2004

Iraq war's costs spiral beyond 1991 Gulf War
The price of the bloodier-than-predicted war and occupation of Iraq is nearing twice that of the 1991 Gulf War, and the economic consequences are complex and far-reaching, analysts have said. And predictions by an Australian economist and his colleague that the current conflict would top $US173 billion ($A248.83 billion) appeared closer to the likely cost than some other estimates. In the runup to the invasion, the White House's then-Office of Management and Budget director, Mitch Daniels, had said a war would probably cost $US50 billion ($A71.92 billion) to $US60 billion ($A86.3 billion). The Age Monday May 24, 2004

Pentagon's postwar fiasco coming full-circle?
NEW YORK -- Pentagon mismanagement, which takes the form of abuses in Abu Ghraib and confusion in dealing with Ahmed Chalabi's aspiration to political power in Iraq, is part of a disturbing pattern. Pentagon officials shelved existing postwar plans for the reconstruction of Iraq - yet had no plan of their own. They ignored the advice of Iraqis, except Mr. Chalabi. Critical information was obscured or withheld from Congress. As a result, national interests have been ill-served, and the promise of democracy in Iraq has been betrayed. CS Monitor Sunday May 23, 2004

Outsourcing Torture and the Problems of 'Quality Control'
In October 2001 a Yemeni student by the name of Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was suspected of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole, was captured and turned over to the United States by Pakistan. U.S. authorities then flew him to Jordan for interrogation. Other "high-value" prisoners in our "Global War on Terrorism" have been shipped off to Egypt, Morocco, and Syria at the request of the United States. What all four countries have in common is a history of using torture to extract information from suspected enemies of the state. Anti-War Saturday May 22, 2004

Trucks made to drive without cargo in dangerous areas of Iraq
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs. Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel." Sun-Herald Saturday May 22, 2004

Iraqis Say U.S. Attacked Wedding Party
RAMADI, Iraq - Revelers at the wedding party began worrying when they heard aircraft overhead at about 9 p.m. With jets still overhead two hours later, they told the band to stop playing and everyone went to bed. "We began to expect some kind of catastrophe," said Madhi Nawaf, who lives in the area near Mogr el-Deeb on the Syrian border. The first bomb hit well after midnight and the barrage didn't stop until nearly sunrise, witnesses told The Associated Press. In the end, up to 45 people were killed in the attack Wednesday, mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe. Washington Post Friday May 21, 2004

U.S. Tries to Get Off the Hook on War Crimes
New York, 2004-05-20 -- The United States is insisting that its troops be exempt from international war crimes prosecutions while serving in any U.N. force in Iraq, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners there, Human Rights Watch said today. Without prior notice to members of the U.N. Security Council, the United States yesterday demanded an immediate vote to renew contentious Security Council Resolution 1487. This measure grants immunity to personnel in U.N. authorized or approved operations from states that have not ratified the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. HRW Thursday May 20, 2004

Power and vainglory
Misguided from the start, the war in Iraq is spiralling out of control. Any legitimacy the occupying forces may ever have possessed has been destroyed, and there are signs that Iraqi insurgents are coming together to mount a movement of resistance that could render the country ungovernable. With even more damning images likely to find their way into the public realm in the near future, the United States is facing an historic defeat in Iraq - a blow to American power more damaging than it suffered in Vietnam, and far larger in its global implications. Independent (UK) Wednesday May 19, 2004

Faulty Terror Report Card
Are we winning the war on terrorism? Although keeping score is difficult, the State Department's annual report on international terrorism, released last month, provides the best government data to answer this question. The short answer is "No," but that's not the spin the administration is putting on it. Washington Post Monday May 17, 2004

Unbending bush
BECAUSE HIS policies are so badly off track, President Bush's repeated assurances that he will soldier on through hard times sound more like folly than fortitude. "We will stay the course," he has said time and again. After Nicholas Berg was killed in Iraq, Bush repeated his resolve: "We will complete our mission. We will complete our task." Perseverance is an admirable quality in a national leader facing difficult challenges to a policy that is fundamentally sound. Churchill comes to mind. But when the policy is wrong, perseverance compounds the problem, often disastrously. Boston Globe Saturday May 15, 2004

Why America Is Not Safer
Favorable poll ratings in the single digits for the United States in most Arab countries worry me. Growing anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and a Muslim world of 1.4 billion people also concerns me. Growing anger in a stalled or counterproductive U.S. public diplomacy campaign is also worrisome. Of the greatest concern, however, is that many of the foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. are major sources of this growing hatred toward the United States. Independent Institute Friday May 14, 2004

U.S.: Systemic Abuse of Afghan Prisoners
London, 2004-05-13 - Mistreatment of prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan is a systemic problem and not limited to a few isolated cases, Human Rights Watch said today. Afghans have been telling us for well over a year about mistreatment in U.S. custody. We warned U.S. officials repeatedly about these problems in 2003 and 2004. It's time now for the United States to publicize the results of its investigations of abuse, fully prosecute those responsible, and provide access to independent monitors. HRW Wednesday May 12, 2004

A failure of leadership at the highest levels
Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable. But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. Army Times Monday May 10, 2004

Red Cross: Iraq abuse widespread, routine
GENEVA -- Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake," according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday. It also says U.S. officers mistreated inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison by keeping them naked in dark, empty cells. Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few." Seattle PI Monday May 10, 2004

Pentagon OK'd Harsh Prison Techniques at Guantanamo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department last year approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba that include forcing inmates to strip naked and subjecting them to loud music, bright lights and sleep deprivation, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. The techniques were approved in April 2003 and require approval from senior Pentagon officials and in some cases Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the paper reported on its Web site, citing unnamed defense officials. Yahoo News Saturday May 08, 2004

Pelosi Statement on Administration's $25 Billion
WASHINGTON, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement yesterday on the Bush Administration's $25 billion Supplemental Appropriations request for the war in Iraq: "By requesting just $25 billion in additional money for our troops in Iraq -- when we know that at least twice that amount will be needed -- the Bush Administration is once again keeping the true cost of the war from the American people. Boston Globe Thursday May 06, 2004

New Photos Reveal More About Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
The collection of photographs begins like a travelogue from Iraq. Here are U.S. soldiers posing in front of a mosque. Here is a soldier riding a camel in the desert. And then: a soldier holding a leash tied around a man's neck in an Iraqi prison. He is naked, grimacing and lying on the floor. Mixed in with more than 1,000 digital pictures obtained by The Washington Post are photos of naked men, apparently prisoners, sprawled on top of one another in a pile while soldiers stand around them. There is another photograph of a naked man with a dark hood over his head, handcuffed to a cell door. And another of a naked man handcuffed to a bunk bed, his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. A pair of women's underwear covers his head and face Washington Wednesday May 05, 2004

25 Prisoners Died While Held by U.S. Forces
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty-five prisoners have died while being held by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and two of them were murdered in Iraq by Americans, U.S. Army officials said on Tuesday. An Army official said one soldier was convicted of murder in the U.S. military justice system for shooting a prisoner to death in September 2003 at a detention center in Iraq, and another prisoner was killed at the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad in November 2003 by a private contractor who worked as an interrogator for the CIA. Yahoo News Tuesday May 04, 2004

Iraqi newspaper editor-in-chief quits, saying U.S. suffocates a free press
BAGHDAD -- The head of a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quit and said yesterday he was taking almost his entire staff with him because of American interference in the publication. On a front-page editorial of the al Sabah newspaper, editor-in-chief Ismail Zayer said he and his staff were "celebrating the end of a nightmare we have suffered from for months ... We want independence. They (the Americans) refuse." Star- Ledger Tuesday May 04, 2004

Torture, Incorporated
The whole package of abuse in Abu Ghuraib Prison is being soothingly denounced by US generals and the Bush administration as an "aberration." Hence we have just one mealy line from Bush: that he is "deeply offended" but certain that "this is not who we are"-as though we have been attacked by outsiders. For admitting that the US occupation truly commanded these things would instantly discredit our claim to bring enlightenment to the benighted Arab world. Worse, admitting that what we do is part of who we are would undermine Bush's divinely charged vision in our inherent cultural superiority, which-in his colonial mind-legitimizes our grant mission to enlighten the world. But in posturing this indignant denial, the Bush administration is lying, again. They knew, months ago, that trouble was up. And they knew that it went deeper than the few soldiers in these photos, now being scape-goated. Counterpunch Tuesday May 04, 2004

U.S. Probe: Two War Prisoners Murdered by Americans
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has investigated the deaths of 25 prisoners held by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and determined that two prisoners were murdered by Americans, one an Army soldier and the other a CIA contractor, Army officials said on Tuesday. Yahoo News Tuesday May 04, 2004

Bush's Torturous Logic
George Bush is shocked, shocked that there is torture being used by U.S. forces on Iraqi prisoners of war, in direct violation not only of basic human rights but of the Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War of which the United States is not only a signatory, but a founding writer. So shocked that he had his Pentagon try to get CBS not to show the pictures of the shocking behavior. Counterpunch Sunday May 02, 2004

TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world's most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women--no accurate count is possible--were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits. New Yorker Sunday May 02, 2004

The privatised occupation
In earlier days, they were simply called mercenaries, and they were usually linked with some distant war in the bush. Recruitment was secret, on the rim of legality. Today, these warriors for sale present themselves as modern, advertising on websites as "Global Elite Troops" or "consultants" for "international strategic security", performing "risk management" or "aggressive security". Internationally active private security companies are in fashion. Whether it be the guarding of persons, the protection of property or escorting convoys, one year after the war on Iraq their services are especially in great demand in occupied Mesopotamia. Al Ahram Saturday May 01, 2004

Bush ignores the horrors of his war
In the spiraling descent into hell in Iraq over the past several weeks, one disgraceful fact has gone virtually unnoticed. Hours after pictures of the ghastly scene showing the burned corpses of four American civilians had been telecast around the world, President Bush, according to The New York Times on April 2, "swept into a huge ballroom in one of Washington's most affluent neighborhoods" on yet another fund-raising venture for his re-election campaign. Seattle PI Friday April 30, 2004

Death to those who dare to speak out
BAGHDAD -- Even under Saddam Hussein, Saad Jawad spoke his mind. The mild-mannered, political science professor was one of only four people who dared to sign a petition asking Iraq's dictator for a more democratic form of government. Today, Dr. Jawad still speaks out. But like other university professors across Iraq, he is increasingly afraid that saying what he thinks - or saying anything political at all - could get him killed. "To tell the truth, at the time of Saddam Hussein, we used to speak to our students freely," says Jawad. "Ministers, for example, were criticized all the time. But now, a lot of people are not willing to say these kinds of things because of fear." CS Monitor Friday April 30, 2004

Troops Without Armor in Iraq
It's hard to imagine what the Pentagon was thinking when it told the American Army and Marine replacement divisions bound for Iraq earlier this year to leave their tanks and other heavily armored vehicles behind. American military planners seem to have ignored evidence that armed resistance to the occupation was far from suppressed. As a result, they failed to anticipate the kinds of ambushes and urban firefights these troops are now caught up in and against which tanks and armored personnel carriers afford the best protection. NY Times Friday April 30, 2004

U.S. War Crimes: Torture of Iraqi Prisoners Exposed
On April 29, CBS television's "60 Minutes II"program screened graphic images of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and sexually humiliated by US troops at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The photographs, which show American soldiers--men and women--smiling, laughing or giving thumbs-up signs alongside naked Iraqi prisoners, expose the sadistic and brutal methods employed by American forces and provide more evidence of the catalog of war crimes being committed by US-led forces in Iraq. Tehran Times Friday April 30, 2004

The President's Testimony Before 9-11 Commission Lacking
It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous. NY Times Thursday April 29, 2004

U.N.'s Blix: War wasn't justified
Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, castigated the Bush administration in a Seattle speech last night, saying its zeal to go to war despite a lack of credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction made it "rather like the witch hunters of previous centuries." Blix said President Bush and his top advisers willfully disregarded mounting evidence that such weapons no longer existed in Iraq. Seattle PI Wednesday April 28, 2004

Flawed theological position on the war
As president, George W. Bush commands the armed forces of the United States. His title in this function is commander in chief. As a Christian, Mr. Bush says he takes his faith in Jesus seriously. However, the office of president does not confer any special status to believers. In other words, Mr. Bush is not "theologian in chief" -- although it appears that that may not be entirely clear to him. Mobile Register Monday April 26, 2004

What Went Wrong? Bush Team Botches War Planning
On 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. It's now widely accepted that the administration "failed dismally to prepare for the security and nation-building missions in Iraq," to quote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- not heretofore known as a Bush basher. Just as experts on peacekeeping predicted before the war, the invading force was grossly inadequate to maintain postwar security. And this problem was compounded by a chain of blunders: doing nothing to stop the postwar looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army, canceling local elections, appointing an interim council dominated by exiles with no political base and excluding important domestic groups. NY Times Friday April 23, 2004

Ashcroft blames 9-11 commission member for 9-11
Mr. Ashcroft's Smear IN HIS TESTIMONY last week before the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft loosed a remarkable attack on Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member who served as deputy attorney general during part of the Clinton administration. The "single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem," Ashcroft said, "was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," and the "basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum" from 1995 -- which Mr. Ashcroft had conveniently declassified for the hearing. "Full disclosure," he said, "compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission" -- that is, Ms. Gorelick. Mr. Ashcroft's allegations, which triggered criticism and demands for her resignation from prominent Republicans, are grossly unfair. Washington Post Tuesday April 20, 2004

The offense in Bush's 9/11 defense
WASHINGTON -- When terrorists plan to strike America, should they call in advance and make reservations? If not - if they aren't specific about time and place - should President Bush and the rest of the federal government be held blameless for failing to stop them? That's been the view of the White House for the past 2-1/2 years, although public pressure may be changing that complacency. We all know by now that, on Aug. 6, 2001, Mr. Bush received a briefing from the CIA warning about "patterns of suspicious activity ... consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." That's not a "historical" document, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission last week - that's an alarm bell that should have been heard. CS Monitor Thursday April 15, 2004

Critics Say Rush to War in Iraq Hurt U.S.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The deadly insurgency in Iraq is a direct result of tactical missteps by the United States during the rush to war a year ago and in the months afterward, some critics say. President Bush could have spared himself major headaches if he had heeded the advice of experts who urged him to assemble a larger force, including Muslim soldiers from Turkey and others countries, to take into Iraq. He also should have avoided the assumption that Iraqis would embrace American soldiers as liberators after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. A healthier regard for Arab perceptions could have helped, said Nayef Samhat, a government and international relations expert at Centre College in Danville, Ky. "The invasion was clearly unprovoked and can be easily seen by many in the Arab-Islamic world as nothing more than the reinvention of imperialism," Samhat said. NY Times Saturday April 10, 2004

Connecting dots/Bush's culpability for 9/11
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 commission Thursday allows for only one conclusion: The Bush administration was outrageously derelict in its duty to protect the American people as the Al-Qaida threat developed. Consider a few of the many issues on which Rice and the commiss Thursday April 08, 2004

The Other War: Afghanistan
A report commissioned by the Pentagon on the invasion of Afghanistan was turned away after it concluded there was a wide gap between how the White House represented the war and what was actually taking place. We speak with the New Yorker's Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh who says, "It's a great trifecta for this administration. In three-and-a-half years of office, we have destroyed Afghanistan, destroyed Iraq and we are in the process of destroying the UN too." Democracy Now Thursday April 08, 2004

Iraq war turned Islamic fighters against US
WASHINGTON - The US-led invasion of Iraq has accelerated the spread of Osama bin Laden's anti-Americanism among once local Islamic militant movements, senior intelligence officials at the CIA and State Department now acknowledge. This in turn has increased the danger to the United States even though Al-Qaeda itself is unable to mount the attacks. At the same time, the Sunni Triangle has become a training ground for foreign Islamic jihadists who are slipping into Iraq to join former Saddam Hussein loyalists to test themselves against US and coalition forces, these officials say. Straits Times Tuesday April 06, 2004

G.I.'s Padlock Baghdad Paper Accused of Lies
BAGHDAD, 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. NY Times Monday March 29, 2004

Injustice in Afghanistan
UNDER PRESSURE from the Supreme Court and many foreign governments, the Bush administration at last has begun to take steps toward providing a review process for the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. But it has yet to address the less publicized but possibly more serious problems surrounding its detention of foreign nationals elsewhere in the world. Under the guise of the war on terrorism, the U.S. military and CIA are holding hundreds, if not thousands, of suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly other locations under conditions of extraordinary secrecy and without any formal legal process. Washington Post Saturday March 20, 2004

Ex - Adviser: Iraq Considered After 9 / 11
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against New York and Washington, according to a new first-person account by a former senior counterterrorism adviser inside the White House. Richard Clarke, the president's counterterrorism coordinator at the time of the attacks, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained on Sept. 12 -- after the administration was convinced with certainty that al-Qaida was to blame -- that, "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." NY Times Friday March 19, 2004

Poland Says It Was Misled Over WMD in Iraq
WARSAW (Reuters) - President Aleksander Kwasniewski said on Thursday Poland, a staunch supporter of last year's U.S.-led war on Iraq, felt misled into believing Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction. "I believe...that Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is a much better place than Iraq with Saddam Hussein," Kwasniewski told a news conference. "Of course I feel a certain discomfort that we were misled about weapons of mass destruction." Reuters Thursday March 18, 2004

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
With Tuesday¹s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself -- but never pulled the trigger. MSNBC Tuesday March 02, 2004

Iraqi exiles still getting paid, despite false intelligence
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war. The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmad Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official. Seattle Times Sunday February 22, 2004

C.I.A. Admits It Didn't Give Weapon Data to the U.N.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 -- The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons. The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt. The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion. NY Times Saturday February 21, 2004

President Revises Rationale For War
Before: Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," Bush said in March 2003. After: Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman," Bush said yesterday in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that will be broadcast today. Yahoo News Saturday February 07, 2004

Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday. In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed. Washington Post Friday February 06, 2004

Misspending Military Dollars
"The strong defense everybody wants will not come from throwing ever larger sums into the wrong weapons."If the Bush administration were at all serious about fiscal responsibility, it would have sent Congress a Defense Department budget that reflected the real costs of military operations, cut out cold-war-era programs and focused on the things the military needs in the 21st century. Regrettably, none of that happened. The budget plan is inaccurate, anachronistic and laden with pork, and Congress is only likely to make things worse. Mr. Bush is proposing to increase basic Pentagon spending by more than $20 billion over last year's budget, and that does not even count operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could add a further $50 billion when the bill is presented to Congress after Election Day. Add that money and the nuclear weapons programs run by the Energy Department to the Pentagon's $402 billion request, and the total will approach half a trillion dollars. NY Times Thursday February 05, 2004

Sham commission / The nation deserves a real probe of intelligence
"What Mr. Bush proposes is not just inadequate, it is duplicitous in its careful political calculation."America's intelligence function needs to be looked at closely, given its grave failures with respect to bothSept. 11 and the Iraq war. What makes President Bush's response to this, the naming of an investigative commission, so appalling is the fact that it is pure political tactics -- not adequate or likely to be persuasive in its results. The argument about whether America's security agencies should have been able to see the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks coming is over. They didn't, in spite of having had some $30 billion a year to ferret out what has always been the highest-priority intelligence of all, a pending attack on the homeland. Post Gazette Thursday February 05, 2004

White House 'distorted' Iraq threat
Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, according to a new report to be published on Thursday by a respected Washington think-tank. These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says. The study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes that, though the long-term threat from Iraq could not be ignored, it was being effectively contained by a combination of UN weapons inspections, international sanctions and limited US-led military action. Full Report">It says the evidence shows that although Iraq retained ambition Thursday January 08, 2004

Bush doctrine strains global rules
The year 2003 was a year defined by one war. It wasn't the biggest war of the year (that honour would go to Sudan or Congo, though both those wars may now be ending), or the fastest-growing war (that prize certainly goes to Nepal), and it was certainly not the oldest (probably Colombia, though there have been intermittent ceasefires over the years). It was a short, low-casualty war whose outcome was never in doubt, since the defence budget of one side was 240 times bigger than that of the other side. But 2003 was the year of the U.S.-Iraq war. It was important because the United States is the greatest power in the world and everything it does is important. It was important because Iraq floats on an ocean of oil, and because it is an Arab and predominantly Muslim country: The spectre of Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" haunts these events. But above all, it was important because for the first time in almost 60 years a major country has mounted a deliberate challenge to the authority of the United Nations and the international rule of law. Toronto Star Thursday January 01, 2004

Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting
Chief Warrant Officer Ronald Eagle, an expert on enemy targeting, served 20 years in the military -- 10 years of active duty in the Air Force, another 10 in the West Virginia National Guard. Then he decided enough was enough. He owned a promising new aircraft-maintenance business, and it needed his attention. His retirement date was set for last February. Washington Post Monday December 29, 2003

Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Non-issue
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 -- In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat. On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities. "So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News. NY Times Thursday December 18, 2003

Army shells pose cancer risk in Iraq
Depleted uranium shells used by British forces in southern Iraqi battlefields are putting civilians at risk from 'alarmingly high' levels of radioactivity. Experts are calling for the water and milk being used by locals in Basra to be monitored after analysis of biological and soil samples from battle zones found 'the highest number, highest levels and highest concentrations of radioactive source points' in the Basra suburb of Abu Khasib - the centre of the fiercest battles between UK forces and Saddam loyalists. Guardian Sunday December 14, 2003

Rights Group Faults U.S. Over Cluster Bombs
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 -- The American and British armies could have prevented hundreds of civilian injuries or deaths during the war in Iraq by eliminating the use of cluster munitions in populated areas, according to a study by a leading human rights group. NY Times Friday December 12, 2003

U.S. Bars Iraq Contracts for Nations That Opposed War
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 -- The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step "is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States." The directive, which was issued by the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, represents perhaps the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq. NY Times Tuesday December 09, 2003

Card: Prewar intelligence woes 'moot'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's chief of staff dismissed as "a moot point" any lingering question about whether Bush relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. USA Today Sunday December 07, 2003

Bush plans new nuclear weapons
The United States is embarking on a multimillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear arsenal, prompting fears it may lead the world into a new arms race. Guardian Sunday November 30, 2003

Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was Done
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 29 -- In the months before the Iraq invasion, Iraqi exile leaders trooped through the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department carrying a message about the future of their homeland: without a strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread looting and violence would erupt. NY Times Saturday November 29, 2003

The Patriotism Refuge
If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson said, then it is the first refuge of politicians. That at least is the case with the Republican National Committee -- and by implication the White House -- which has started running a television commercial defending George Bush's handling of the Iraq war, saying the president's various Democratic opponents are attacking him "for attacking the terrorists." Not really. It's for doing such a bad job of it. Washington Post Tuesday November 25, 2003

Stunning arrogance
The Bush administration's policy on Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. Last week the administration cobbled together strategy which will see much of the political process handed back to the Iraqis in a matter of months. The United States would have us believe that it has sown the seeds of democracy. It's done nothing of the sort. The Standard Friday November 14, 2003

The hidden cost of Bush's war
Concern about fatalities among Western forces in Iraq tends to overlook another ghastly statistic: the spectacularly mounting toll of the severely wounded. The Independent Thursday November 13, 2003

Afghan Poppies Sprout Again
There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists," wrote Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. anti-drug program. If "energetic interdiction measures" are not undertaken now, he added, the country's drug cancer will "metastasize into corruption, violence and terrorism." Washington Post Monday November 10, 2003

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE: A President MIA from Public Grief Over Casualties
American soldiers are coming home each day, DOA at Dover, Del. More than 200 of them have been smuggled back into the country in this fashion since the mission in Iraq was declared accomplished. Stealth patriots. Their homecomings are off-limits to reporters, and they come home on the Q.T. without so much as a greeting by the politicians who sent them to Iraq to meet their untimely deaths. SF Chronicle Sunday November 09, 2003

In Iraq, US ignores human rights lessons
HUMAN RIGHTS hawks are glad that Saddam Hussein is no longer murdering his citizens. Why, then, are we upset over President Bush's Iraq policy? Because it ignores the lessons of earlier human rights wars, is Wednesday November 05, 2003

Invasion killed 'up to 15,000 Iraqis'
A study by the Massachusetts-based Project on Defence Alternatives (PDA) says the available evidence shows approximately 11,000 to 15,000 Iraqis, combatants and non-combatants, were killed in the course of the US-led invasion. "Of the total number of Iraqi fatalities during the relevant period, approximately 30% (or between 3200 and 4300) were non-combatant civilians - that is, civilians who did not take up arms," says the study released on Tuesday. Al Jazeera Thursday October 30, 2003

U.S. raid nets entire Iraqi village
HABBARIYAH, Iraq -- American troops in helicopters swooped down on this remote sheepherding village in the desert and detained nearly all the men, one as old as 81, one as young as 13. A month after the raid, apparently aimed at preventing terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia, only two of the 79 captives have been freed. Japan Today Thursday October 30, 2003

Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their executives have had important political and military connections, according to a study released Thursday. NY Times Thursday October 30, 2003

Group Faults U.S. Tactics Against Civilians in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Oct. 20 -- U.S. forces have killed at least 94 civilians in Baghdad since May 1 "in questionable circumstances" but faced investigation in only five incidents, encouraging soldiers to believe they can fire with impunity, a human rights group said in a report released Tuesday. Washington Post Tuesday October 21, 2003

Bush Admin. Used Psy-Ops, Propaganda and Information Warfare In Build-Up to Iraq Invasion
A new report by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner charges the U.S. and Britain relied on information warfare and psychological operations to inform the public in the lead-up and during the invasion of Iraq. He outlines over 50 stories that appeared in the U.S. media that were either purposely false or misleading. Democracy Now Monday October 20, 2003

Bush threatened Syria while at war on two fronts
With troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush still found the will to threaten Syria, which frightened Europeans, who "appealed to American officials to 'cool down' the rhetoric over allegations against Syria. European foreign ministers said that tough diplomacy could complicate the situation in post-war Iraq." Crosswalk Sunday October 05, 2003

Bush claims terrorists want to take our freedoms away
We have been told that the terrorists want to take away our freedoms. First of all, how could this possibly be done? As a friend recently pointed out: "What do they expect them to do? Come over here wielding swords, forcing everybody to grow beards?" The whole idea of a outside entity taking away the freedoms of the American people is ludicrous. We have been told that the terrorists hate our freedom of speech. Would this be the same freedom of speech that had Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon sentenced to 37 months in prison for "threatening to kill or harm the President" after telling a joke during a bar room discussion? Would this be the same freedom of speech that had Secret Service Agents question a High School student for wearing a controversial t-shirt , treated as a potential threat on the president? Would this be the same freedom of speech that has political essayist voxfux on the run after a combined task force from the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Major Crimes Unit raided his Long Island home? Would this be the same freedom of speech that cost TV host Bill Maher his job for simply pointing out the inverse reality of Bush's comments after the attacks? Prison Planet Sunday October 05, 2003

Bush's real enemy is "evil"
Ever since 2001-09-11, President George W. Bush has been struggling to explain to the American people exactly who he thinks our enemy is and why we should go to war against them. After a few days of floundering around with vague remarks about "them", he hit upon his final answer: our enemy is evil . Our war is against evil . I have to admit that I'm still stumped by this answer. Our war is against the enemy of evil, Bush says, but how do we tell who is evil so that we will know who to go to war against? In the war against evil, will the United States go to war against all murderers? Against all theives? Against all liars? Irregular Times Sunday October 05, 2003

Women in Afghanistan still not liberated, long after Taliban overthrow
The ultra-conservative Taliban regime, which was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, had banned women from working and girls from getting an education. The Afghan government has since lifted those restrictions, but in rural areas where it has little authority many women still cannot work and girls still cannot attend school. "Nearly two years on, discrimination, violence, and insecurity remain rife, despite promises by world leaders, including President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, that the war in Afghanistan would bring liberation for women," the report said. NY Times Sunday October 05, 2003

Bush argued that Iraq is a country with abundant natural resources
The reality: Though it is true that Iraq sits on one of the largest oil reserves in the world, at this point the country needs to import oil because of the decrepit state of its oil production facilities and continuing sabotage. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush argued that other countries opposed to the war would contribute to Iraq's reconstruction
The reality: Most countries, including France, have been reluctant to send troops or help pay for reconstruction. Great Britain reduced its initial contribution of 45,000 troops to about 11,000. There is one Polish-led division of about 9,000 troops composed of forces from more than 20 countries. In most of the world, the U.S. intervention remains very unpopular with the public and the leaders. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush argued that the removal of Saddam Hussein would improve relations between Israel and Palestine
The reality: There has been no significant change in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a result of Hussein's removal from power. In fact, if anything, the situation there has only deteriorated. Suicide bombings and other acts of violence are still ever-present in the region and the most recent peace plan is in shambles. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush claimed that a large number of U.S. troops would not be needed in Iraq after the war The reality: U.S. and allied troo
August -- and 90% were Americans. A number of Members of Congress are calling for additional American divisions to be deployed to Iraq. The Administration is seeking troops of other nations. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush claimed that Iraq would be able to shoulder much of the reconstruction costs
The reality: The Administration's claim was an obvious misjudgment. The Iraqi economy is presently in shambles, exacerbated by widespread looting and destruction carried out after the war that the U.S. was unable to prevent. It will cost billions of dollars from the United States or other countries to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Congress has already appropriated $2.5 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, and the administration recently requested an additional $20 billion for next year. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush claimed that the US was not interested in occupying Iraq
The reality: Neither the Iraqi people and other nations around the world are sure about present U.S. intentions; many Iraqis see the U.S. as occupiers. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush said that Iraqi troops would help keep the peace
The reality: Only a tiny fraction of Iraq's military surrendered to U.S. forces; the majority melted away. The remaining Iraqi army was simply disbanded, with some of those soldiers undoubtedly joining the guerillas opposing U.S. occupation. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush claimed that the war in Iraq would not be very expensive
The reality: It is now clear that the prediction of $50-$60 billion was extremely low. Last year Congress appropriated about $70 billion for the war; the latest request is for an additional $87 billion. It is almost anyone's guess how much the U.S. will ultimately spend. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush said that Iraqis would govern themselves in a matter of weeks or months
The reality: Iraqis will not govern the country any time soon. The U.S. is unwilling to establish a timetable for the handover of authority. Paul Bremer is leading the Coalition Provisional Authority that appointed an Iraqi Governing Council, a body that is unelected and has little power. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

U.S. troops will be welcomed in Iraq as liberators.
The reality: Very few Iraqi citizens greeted Americans as liberators. In fact, many see the U.S. as an occupier. There has been widespread rioting, looting and demonstrations against the U.S. A strong guerilla movement has continued to cause many casualties among American troops. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush said that resistance would fade quickly; hostility will be short-lived
The reality: Hostility is strong, and growing. During a July 16 interview on "Good Morning America," the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid, described the situation in Iraq as "a classical guerrilla-type campaign [being waged] against us. It's low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it's war however you describe it." Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Bush said that post-war Iraq would be like post-war France
The reality: There is absolutely no similarity. Council for a Livable World Thursday October 02, 2003

Iraq war failed to achieve its objectives
Another fine mess. Post-September 11, George Bush began an unwinnable war on multiple fronts against a nebulous enemy. And two years on, a new study shows, the campaign has had little impact on its targets. Guardian Thursday September 11, 2003

Bush shifts rationale for war
Months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when it became clear that Iraq really had not been an imminent threat to anyone, the Bush administration began to seek new reasons to justify the war. As the Bush administration's leading hawk on Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has been a tireless proponent of the argument that Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction was a compelling enough reason for the United States to resort to war. These days, his emphasis is different. Washington Post Thursday September 11, 2003

Bush hires thugs to find more thugs in Iraq
Have thugs will travel. America's tax dollars are now being used by the Bush Administration "to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo -- perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word," writes Floyd, "seems to be that these bloodstained 'insiders' will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained 'insiders' responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad -- and killing another dozen American soldiers..." Working for Change Wednesday September 10, 2003

Bush's war rationale faulty
For more than a year, Bush has framed Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And for more than a year, he has produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq offered weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Slate Wednesday September 10, 2003

Bush administration now claims that WMDs don't matter
In an interview with The Associated Press, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, said that whether Saddam's regime actually possessed weapons of mass destruction isn't really the issue. This is a clear reversal of prior Bush administration claims, and an attempt to justify war after the fact. Salon Friday September 05, 2003

The US has wrecked the task of post-war reconstruction in Iraq
The US has wrecked the task of post-war reconstruction in Iraq as in Afghanistan, according to the head of a major charity. ACF said there were parallels between the failures of US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We have the feeling that civilian populations are sacrificed for operations of a political nature," said Thomas Gonnet, the agency's director of operations. Relief Web Wednesday September 03, 2003

Bush's man in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, says terrorists are "right where we want 'em"
Iraq may be spinning out of control, but in the Bush administration, the spin was strictly controlled. From Baghdad to the White House, administration spokesmen went to elaborate lengths to argue that the presence of terrorists in Iraq was somehow a positive development. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, adopted a tone of "we've got 'em right where we want 'em." The administration strained even harder to find "I told you so" parallels between the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the Palestinian suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem that killed 18 people on the same day. "It's emblematic of the kind of problem that we are fighting," said the senior official at the White House. Newsweek Monday September 01, 2003

Hans Blix intimidated by U. S. before war
Former chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix felt Washington was intimidating him to produce reports that would justify military action in the run-up to the Iraq war, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday. Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace Friday August 29, 2003

9-11 turned into propganda by Bush
Lights, Camera, Exploitation. In the end 9-11 turned out to be a made-for-TV movie, or rather, the basis for one shameless propaganda vehicle for our superstar president George W. Bush. Village Voice Wednesday August 27, 2003

Halliburton awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents. Washington Post Wednesday August 27, 2003

U.S. troops short on rifles
U.S. troops in Iraq may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but they're certainly getting their hands on the country's stock of Kalashnikovs and, they say, they need them. The soldiers based around Baqouba are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles. Free Republic Tuesday August 26, 2003

U. S. blocks UN resolution that could lead to ICC prosecutions
The United States on Monday opposed a resolution aimed at protecting U.N. staff because it fears it could lay the groundwork for prosecutions by the International Criminal Court. News Observer Monday August 25, 2003

Weapons experts say drones weren't designed to deliver WMDs, as Bush claimed
Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons. Council for a Livable World Monday August 25, 2003

Bush's war in Iraq creates terrorists
The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq. Rushing to pummel Iraq after 9-11, Bush officials ginned up links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. They made it sound as if Islamic fighters on a jihad against America were slouching toward Baghdad to join forces with murderous Iraqis. There was scant evidence of it then, but it's coming true now. Salt Lake Tribune Sunday August 24, 2003

Bush fighting to keep money from injured Gulf War vets
Former POWs from the 1991 Gulf War sued Iraq for damages, and won. Now the US government is fighting their monetary award, saying the money is needed to rebuild Iraq. Washington Post Wednesday July 30, 2003

Bush eliminates Saudi references from 9-11 report
The 850 page report on intelligence prior to 9/11 is curiously missing 28 pages. Some say those pages are the ones highlighting what Bush was told and the role of the Saudis. As one reader suggests, this may be the equivalent of the 18 minute gap created by Rosemary Woods to help Nixon cover his Watergate lies. Indymedia Victoria Friday July 25, 2003

Months after the invasion, many in Iraq are without water and electricity
The Bush administration has yet to provide electricity and water for these poor people, let alone democracy. Socialist Worker Online Friday July 18, 2003

Rather than speed up democracy in Iraq, Bush favors more troops
American soldiers are dying almost daily in Iraq. But rather than speeding up democratic processes, Bush is talking about sending more troops. Too bad LBJ is not around to offer some relevant advice about escalating troop levels. Blue Martin Schram Wednesday July 16, 2003

Bush claims that he launched war because Un inspectors kicked out
"The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective." Salon Tuesday July 15, 2003

Bush pushes for tactical nukes
At Bush's urging, Congress voted to lift its 10-year-old ban on research and development of small, "tactical" nukes, bombs ranging up to a third the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Common Dreams Wednesday July 09, 2003

Bush promises democracy for Iraq, fails to deliver
Bush promised democracy to Iraq, but what kind of democracy is it when Paul Bremer, the US Administrator, hand picks the new governing body and holds veto power over anything they decide? News.com. News.Com Tuesday July 08, 2003

Bush's "Bring 'em on!" results in soldiers' deaths
"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Mr. Bush said. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., called the president's language "irresponsible and inciteful." CBS News Thursday July 03, 2003

Women in Iraq now can't leave their house for fear of violence
In general, Iraqi locals are antagonistic toward American occupation. Al Jazeera Tuesday July 01, 2003

Bush declares anyone captured near battles as "enemy combatants"
depriving them of rights Anyone captured on or near battles in Afghanistan or Iraq have been arbitrarily designated enemy combatants which means they lose their Constitutional rights, even if they're American citizens. Thank you, John Ashcroft, for the cynically named USA PATRIOT Act. Human Rights Watch Monday June 23, 2003

By attacking Muslims, Bush diverts attention from corporate scandals
Bush seems determined to press his crusade against Muslim nations. He is running a political Ponzi scheme, diverting the public from the Enron and stock market swindles by invading Afghanistan, then covering that mess by invading Iraq, and now trying to cover up the growing Iraq disaster by fanning a new crisis with Iran. Common Dreams, Sunday June 22, 2003

US troops kill Iraqi demonstrators
The military has also confirmed that two people died when troops fired on a crowd gathered outside the main gate of the Republican Palace, Saddam Hussein's former presidential compound and now the headquarters of the American-led administration. Demonstrators say another person was injured. The Iraqis were demanding their unpaid wages. CBC News Wednesday June 18, 2003

Bush claims WMDs are found, referring to two empty trailers
President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary justification for going to war. Washington Post Saturday May 31, 2003

Bush declares, prematurely, Mission Accomplished
Bush, declaring the war was over in his pilot's outfit, wasted a huge amount of money for purely propaganda reason. Not to mention that he was premature in his announcement. BBC News Friday May 02, 2003

Bush bars UN weapons teams from Iraq
The United States will not permit United Nations weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, saying the US military has taken over the role of searching for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. In simultaneous briefings in New York and Washington, both the White House and the US ambassador to the UN said they saw no role in postwar Iraq for the UN weapons inspection teams. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington to "make no mistake about it. The United States and the coalition have taken on the responsibility for dismantling Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction]". The Sydney Morning Herald Thursday April 24, 2003

US Troops allowed looting following the invasion of Iraq
Looting was allowed to take place in Baghdad. Three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee have resigned to protest the looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. One of them criticized "the administration's total lack of sensitivity and forethought regarding the Iraq invasion and the loss of cultural treasures." Another said in a separate interview that he saw "a failure on the part of the United States to interdict what is now an open floodgate." Asia News Friday April 18, 2003

US protected only two sites after Iraq invasion, including ministry of oil
Only two sites in Iraq were even protected by U.S. troops after Bush falsely declared the war over-- one being the ministry of oil. Kilafah Monday April 14, 2003

US troops draped US flag over Saddam's statue, heightening fears of imperialism
American soldiers draped the American flag over Saddam's statue in a sight thrilling to some Americans. For the Muslim world, however, the image of the American flag in Baghdad had an entirely different meaning. On the Arabic language news channel, Al-Arabiyya, the newscaster covering the fall of Baghdad simply commented, "That should have been an Iraqi flag." Islam Online Saturday April 12, 2003

US troops shoot up journalists' hotels and Al-Jazeera headquarters killing and injuring several
TV station al-Jazeera says the US knew the location of its headquarters and the Palestine Hotel was well-known as the base for western TV and newspapers since the start of the war. The US admitted it had made "a grave mistake" bombing al-Jazeera and said it had opened fire on the Palestine Hotel after coming under attack from snipers. But that account has been dismissed as "absurd" by journalists working out of the hotel. The Guardian Tuesday April 08, 2003

Bush threatens North Korea as part of his "axis of evil"
North Korea is yet another country that Bush has threatened. According to the Centre Daily Times, "President Bush last year tagged Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an 'axis of evil' that threatens world order. " Centre Daily Time Sunday April 06, 2003

Bush's general insensitive to Iraqi deaths
When asked how many Iraqis had been killed in the war, General Tommy Franks said, "We don't do body counts." His callous indifference hides the estimated 6,000 to 7,000 civilians killed. Iraq Body Count Thursday April 03, 2003

Bush after complete makeover of the middle east
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan. In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Washington Monthly Tuesday April 01, 2003

Bush attempts illegal assassination of Saddam
Executive Order 12333 signed in 1976 by President Ford has not been revoked, meaning that the attempted murder of President Saddam Hussein by US military forces is illegal under US law. The Fourth Convention of The Hague stipulates that such actions violate international law. President George W. Bush is guilty of the crime of attempted murder. The Fourth Convention of The Hague, signed in 1907, states that the premeditated assassination of individuals is illegal under international law, which means that the strike against the bunker of Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the illegal attack on Iraq by an Anglo-American coalition, attempting to take out the Iraqi leadership, violates international law. Pravda Tuesday March 25, 2003

Bush, at neocons behest, remaking the world
While Bush has presented the looming Iraq war as a response to 9/11, Grow said that to Wolfowitz, it isn't fundamentally about terrorism or weapons of mass destruction or U.N. resolutions. To Wolfowitz and the neocons, Iraq represents the weak spot in the chain of nations to which they plan to bring American notions of democracy and capitalism, Grow said. In their vision, war with Iraq is followed by democratization of Iraq, then democratization -- by military means or otherwise -- of other Arab states, then a rolling of the momentum into Asia, with special emphasis on North Korea and China, Grow said. Star Tribune Sunday March 16, 2003

Bush calls on God to pull religious right into war
Bush deliberately dresses his war rhetoric in language designed to appeal to the Christian Right, the key building bloc of the conservative arm of the Republican Party. And not only his refrain about evil and evildoers; he repeatedly draws God into an explicit alliance with the administration's agenda. Financial Review Tuesday March 11, 2003

Bush hid the cost of war until after it began
Bush and his administration refused to estimate the cost of the war when he was whipping up the fever, but now we see that the price for the Iraq invasion will be about $100 billion. This is money that could have been spent on education, health care, housing, and highways. An expensive deception, indeed. Cost of War Monday March 03, 2003

Bush favors UN irrelevance
Bush warned that the UN would become irrelevant unless they went along with his war against Iraq, but when they refused, he defied them and therefore tried to make them irrelevant. But that's part of the plan; the far-right, which Bush represents, has always hated the UN. Express News Monday March 03, 2003

Bush provided poor intelligence to UN inspectors prior to Iraq war
Either out of incompetence or to stymie their efforts, the Bush administration provided poor intelligence to UN inspectors prior to the war. CBS News Thursday February 20, 2003

In most European countries, 80 - 90% of the people were against the Iraq war
Most heads of state were against the war. Britain, Bush's only ally, was carried along on the back of a lie, just as Americans were. BBC Tuesday February 11, 2003

"Shock and awe" is really terrorism
They can call it "Shock And Awe" if they want; but- by the Pentagon's own admission - we've already got a name for this kind of thing, and it is "terrorism." The Plaid Adder, Friday January 31, 2003

Bush demonized Saddam Hussein
In order to generate support for the war against Iraq, Bush demonized Saddam Hussein, but did so with references to atrocities he committed a decade ago. Bush, however, implied that Hussein's crimes were new. ABC News Wednesday January 29, 2003

Bush kills suspected terrorists in Yemen, raising questions of legality
The United States took a bold step in its global war on terrorism this week when a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft blasted a vehicle to bits in the Yemeni desert, killing six alleged members of al-Qaida. However, the killings also raised questions about the legal underpinning for such tactics -- and whether the U.S. military has the right to use them anywhere in the world. MSNBC News Wednesday November 06, 2002

Bush questions patriotism of war critics
The Bush administration is dismissing critics of its war designs, calling them political opportunists and questioning their patriotism. Mother Jones Monday October 14, 2002

Experts argued that Saddam would only use WMDs if attacked
Although Bush claimed we were going to war against Iraq so Hussein wouldn't use his WMDs, most analysts thought they would only be used if Hussein was attacked. Common Dreams Sunday October 13, 2002

Bush went to war in Iraq in spite of the will of the people
According to a CBS News poll before the war, "Americans are willing to wait for that approval: a majority wants Congress to wait until the U.N. has acted before voting on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, even if that would take longer than the few weeks in which the administration wants action." CBS News Tuesday September 24, 2002

Arabs say Iraq Governing Council is illigitimate
Islam's most revered authority of Al-Azhar issued a fatwa banning Arab countries from dealing with the Iraqi Governing Council, saying the U.S.-backed body is illegitimate. Islam Online Monday August 26, 2002

Bush's preemptive war policy violates international law
The Bush administration's preemptive war policy, wherein he claims the right to overthrow any government suspected of being a danger to the US, goes against international law, specifically the UN Charter, which prohibits one country from attacking another unless under imminent threat of invasion. The Guardian, Friday June 07, 2002

Bush says "You're with us, or you're against us" ignoring subtle foreign policy Catchy sound bites can lead to shaky foreig
September: "You're either with us . . . or with the terrorists." But the problem with this black-and-white approach is painfully obvious when it comes to America's longtime ally and oil supplier, Saudi Arabia. To judge from a growing body of evidence, the Saudis have managed to be both "with us . . . and with the terrorists." So where does this leave the Bush administration? St. Petersburg Times Thursday May 09, 2002

Bush has been trying to limit the probe of intelligence failures preceding the WTC attacks
Although the president and vice president told Sen. Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability. "We will take a look at the allocation of resources. Ten thousand federal agents -- where were they? How many assets were used, and what signals were missed?" a Democratic senator told CNN. CNN Tuesday January 29, 2002

Bush continues the Reaganesque folly of the missile defense shield
The program will siphon off billions for a system no one really expects to work. Washington Post Tuesday May 01, 2001