Afghanistan

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=24183

AFGHANISTAN:
Everything but Peace

Ricardo Grassi*

On the flight out of Dubai, an item in the pockets of the passenger seats removes all doubt about the airplane's destination: along with the laminated sheet detailing aircraft safety procedures is a brochure from the United Nations Landmine Action Service explaining how to avoid death or injury from the explosive devices in Afghanistan.

KABUL, Jun 14 (IPS) - The airplane lands at Kabul, a city built -- and destroyed -- in a valley 1,800 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains reaching 4,000 metres high, reminiscent of a scene from the South American Andes.

Along the landing strip are the carcasses of aircraft that were disembowelled in October 2001, when U.S. forces bombarded the airport to make it useless to the fundamentalist Islamic regime, the Taliban, that controlled most of the country at the time.

''We stopped trying to estimate the number of landmines,'' Dan Kelly, director of the Action Centre Against Mines in Afghanistan, told IPS. What is certain, he added, is that they are planted throughout the entire country, even in farmland, and each month they kill more than 100 people.

Kelly directs 8,000 Afghans involved in a widespread, ongoing effort to deactivate these fatal devices.

Kabul is an intense, vibrant city. Trucks, buses, cars, bicycles, street vendors, people pulling carts, and donkeys, sheep and even camels have to navigate around each other and soldiers and guards carrying kalashnikov rifles in an ongoing series of traffic jams.

They kick up an ever-present, lung-clogging dust cloud.

Reconstruction efforts are evident, although Kabul continues to be a showcase of bombed-out buildings and missile-destroyed houses.

According to the insurance companies, this is a country at war, despite the fact that talk is of peace, and, in September, the country is to hold its first presidential elections in 25 years.

The elections are to take place a couple months before the U.S. vote that will either re-elect President George W. Bush or put his likely rival from the Democratic Party, John Kerry, in the White House.

It is the U.S. elections in November that make the Afghan vote credible, because it is believed that Bush will want to announce in his campaign effort that he ''pacified and democratised'' the Central Asian nation, invaded by U.S. forces shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The United States was looking in Afghanistan for the man thought to be the mastermind behind the attacks, Saudi national Osama bin Laden, and, on the way, sought to liquidate the Taliban regime and capture its leader, mullah Omar. Both men remain at large..

And now the war is intensifying. One clue: there are 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan today. Two months ago there were 13,500.

Another sign is that the U.S. television networks have also returned. They left practically as soon as the B-52s had done their job, the Taliban government was overthrown, and Hamid Karzai was brought back from his exile in the United States to serve as interim president.

Karzai, widely seen as lacking political power, wants to extend his mandate -- and he has Bush's support for that aim.

"If the elections are in September, (Karzai) will achieve his goal, because there will be no mature alternatives capable of negotiating with the United States," says Shahir Zahine, a former mujahideen who fought the 1979 Soviet invasion. He is now head of a non-governmental organisation that publishes three weekly magazines, two of which are leaders in national circulation.

What could postpone the elections? "If insecurity increases and the United Nations fails to complete the voter lists," Zahine, who also directs one of Kabul's top radio stations, said in an IPS interview.

In May, three workers carrying out an electoral census were murdered. The voter rolls do not include even half of the potential electorate, estimated at 10 million.

The increase in troop presence serves to prevent a civil war and to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, where they remain a strong presence.

Furthermore, the International Security Assistance Force under NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) command, has Kabul under control but is incapable of ensuring law and order in the rest of the country, where warlords prevail.

Why have the U.S. media returned to Afghanistan? "I don't know why, but they think Osama bin Laden is about to be captured," says U.N. spokesman, Manoel de Almeyda, a Brazilian national.

That is another thing keeping Bush awake at night: he wants Bin Laden captured before the November elections in the United States.

A third "Western" dream is to allow Afghan women to be free of the burqa, the head-to-toe shroud, with its embroidered mesh that hides their eyes. Thousands of burqas are seen on the streets of the capital. Most are light blue.

Crossing the city by car, one sees many women dressed in this attire. It can be disturbing to see so many faceless humans moving about.

When asked why she wears the burqa, on woman responded: "It is my Islamic clothing. I've worn it since I was young, and continue to use it now that I am old."

"The people from the United States are in a hurry," says Homa Sabri, of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

"They want (the Afghan women) to quit using the burqa immediately so that they can announce that they have given us back our dignity and freedom. But this cannot be imposed. It is a slow road until women feel secure and lose their fear," she said.

Sayed Raheen, minister of information and culture, has a similar response in a conversation with IPS: "The international community turns out to be fundamentalist when it seeks to hurry a country that is just taking its first steps."

Comments that are a bit more radical come from a European consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We are here to promote U.S. interests, not Afghanistan's," says the consultant bitterly, having resigned as an adviser to the Afghan Central Bank, where Washington has some 40 people working to set up a new banking system for the country.

"The invaders impose their capitalist economic style on a country with nearly 2,000 years of Islamic culture, one that rejects the concept of monetary interest," explained the source.

As they await Bin Laden's capture, the U.S. TV networks keep busy competing for the latest news on the torture inflicted by the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and the Marines on Afghan detainees at the southern military base of Bagram.

Reports of torture and abuse had been circulating since early 2002, but nothing was done until recently, when denunciations emerged regarding similar actions against Iraqis committed by the occupying forces in that country.

In Bagram, a strategic location at the foot of the Hindu Kush, forts were built by Persia's Cyrus the Great 500 years b.c., with the name Kapish-Kanish, by Alexander the Great, who dubbed it Alexandria of the Caucasus, and the Soviets, who built their main base there in the 1980s, withdrawing in 1989.

Now the presence is U.S. and NATO troops, keeping watch over a crucial zone for controlling the extraction and transport of petroleum in the Caspian Sea region, also of great interest to Russia and China.

The Afghan population is included on the list of the world's poorest. Illiteracy surpasses 80 percent, reaching 92 percent amongst women. But these are just estimates because it is not known exactly how many Afghans there are -- maybe between 20 and 28 million.

At Bagram, as at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib, prisoners were photographed in the nude and humiliated, according to the testimonies of some victims. Sooner or later, someone will put those photos in the hands of the media.

Meanwhile, growing apace is the expansion of the illicit poppy crops used to produce opium and heroin -- brought to a halt during the Taliban regime -- and the uncertainty over whether the Afghans will be able to build a strong, single state.

Afghanistan is responsible for 70 to 75 percent of the global production of heroin, a business worth 30 billion dollars a year.

(*ATT. EDITORS: Not for publication in Chile.)

(END/2004)

Iraq - Saddam trial

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=24261

IRAQ:
The West May Go On Trial with Saddam

Aaron Glantz

If Saddam can go on trial for planting landmines and selling chemical weapons, so can those who sold them to him.

ARBIL, Jun 18 (IPS) - A year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the mountains and plains of Northern Iraq are still covered in landmines planted by the former Iraqi dictator's regime during the 1980s. That is when he fought a decade-long war with Iran and many battles with Kurdish guerrillas.

The Red Cross has made thousands of synthetic limbs for Iraqi civilians who have lost their arms or legs. Hundreds have been killed.

”We were in the village when we heard the mines go off in the middle of the night,” recalls Mohammed Abuznawee, a shepherd who lives near a minefield outside Kirkuk. The Iraqi army mined the area around his village in 1985.

”Over 200 sheep broke out of their pen and walked into the minefield in the middle of the night and were killed. Then my brother went out to try to save the flock. He also died.”

Iraq did not make any of the landmines Saddam used in his wars. They were all sold to him by Italy, China, the United States, and the former Soviet Union.

In Northern Iraq the Italian built mine Valmara is the most plentiful and the most dangerous. But the U.S. built landmine, the M-14 sold to Saddam by the administration of then president Ronald Reagan is also lethal.

”It's almost impossible to detect,” says Wiyan Abdurrachman of the Kurdish demining organisation Aras. ”There's no trigger that we can look for and mine is set off by pressure.”

Aburrachman is angry that so many governments supported Saddam. ”Saddam Hussein didn't have any mines, any ammunition. The only thing he had was money for buying the mines and guns.”

The governments of France, Germany and Britain sold chemical agents to Saddam's government. U.S. companies also chipped in. France sold Iraq Mirage fighter jets and the Soviets Mig-29s that were used to deliver the chemical weapons.

The U.S. government added key intelligence information to make sure Saddam's planes were not shot down.

”Some day,” Abdurrachman says, ”those who supplied him will also have to stand trial.”

But with a possible trial date drawing near it is still not clear whether Saddam's international backers will be called as part of a war crimes trial.

Salem Chalabi, the prosecutor picked by the Bush administration is the nephew of former CIA asset Ahmed Chalabi who fell from the Pentagon's grace last month amidst allegations of providing false intelligence to the CIA and spying for Iran.

Salem Chalabi has not set out his case yet. Speaking to reporters in Baghdad this week Chalabi said only that he was ”putting together” his charges which would be ready shortly.

Kurds hope Chalabi probes deep. ”We want Saddam to talk,” says Alan Zangana, programme director for the Kurdish Human Rights Watch in San Diego, California. ”We want to know from Saddam which weapons he used and where he got them.”

A lot of journalists have pointed at companies, he said. ”They have named French and German and American companies as selling chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein. But we need this information established as fact in a court of law. We need these companies to be pointed out in public.”

Zangana says Kurds and other Iraqis wronged by Saddam's Ba'ath regime could then sue the companies for damages the way survivors of the Nazi holocaust sued Swiss banks.

Saddam's defence attorneys, Jordanian lawyers Mohammed al-Rashdan and chairman of the Jordan Bar Association Hussain Mjalli have not said whether they plan to call Westerners as part of a trial.

Their argument is that since the invasion of Iraq was not approved by the United Nations, it has no legal basis. As such, they argue, the U.S.-led occupation authority has no right to change or cancel the Iraqi constitution.

”Article 40 in the Iraqi constitution stipulates that the head of the state enjoys immunity against persecution,” al-Rashdan told the Arab satellite network al-Jazeera.

”Iraq, Iraqi people, Iraqi law were hijacked,” Mjalli said. ”The occupation of Iraq was illegal, so ipso facto everything that follows is illegal.”

Mohammed al-Rashdan and Hussin Mjalli are also threatening to sue the United States because they have not been allowed to see their client (END/2004)

US foreign aid - reproductive rights

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=24189

WOMEN-LATAM:
'Pro-Life' Pressure Fails to Thwart 'Sexual Rights'

Diego Cevallos

Washington and right-wing anti-abortion groups lost an important battle in Latin America and the Caribbean because despite their threats and pressure, they failed to keep the terms ''sexual and reproductive rights'' out of the final document of the regional conference on women.

MEXICO CITY, Jun 14 (IPS) - In the Ninth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held Jun. 10-12 in Mexico City, ''the United States blackmailed several delegations to prevent the use of the terms 'sexual and reproductive rights' in the final document,'' Lilián Celiberti, with the Articulación Feminista Marcosur -- an umbrella of women's groups from South America's Mercosur trade bloc -- told IPS.

But in the end, the pressure failed.

In the view of the U.S. administration of George W. Bush and conservative ''pro-life'' groups, the mere mention of sexual and reproductive rights is equivalent to promoting abortion. They demand that only the term ''reproductive health'' be employed.

In the final declaration, the region committed itself to debating and implementing legislation ''that guarantees the responsible exercise of sexual and reproductive rights and access without discrimination to health services, encompassing sexual and reproductive health.''

That priority, along with the goal of guaranteeing gender equality, and the fight against gender violence, will be the objectives forwarded by Latin America at next year's Beijing+10 Conference in New York, to be held 10 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China.

''We see what happened in Mexico as very disturbing, because the pro-abortion and pro-lesbian groups imposed a stance against life and morality, which does not at all represent the view of this region,'' Rocío Gálvez, president of the conservative Catholic organisation Provida (Pro-life) in Mexico, commented to IPS.

Gálvez complained that delegates from the Vatican and organisations opposed to abortion were ''deliberately'' excluded from several of the debates at the conference, and that ''in the end, a vision was imposed that has nothing to do with the thinking of a vast majority of Latin Americans.''

Those groups, in sync with the policies of the Bush administration, which promotes abstinence and faithfulness, are also mainly opposed to the use of birth control and to broad-based sex education.

Celiberti said several of the delegations participating in the regional conference, especially the ones from certain Central American countries, received direct threats from Washington that their financial assistance would be cut if they agreed to the use of the term ''sexual rights''.

At the end of the conference, which was convened by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), most of the roughly 400 delegates burst into loud applause and embraced, while a minority, including U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey and the delegations from El Salvador and Nicaragua, which backed Washington's positions, remained stiffly silent.

''We cannot celebrate the fact that pro-abortion and pro-lesbian groups hijack the majority of the conferences where reproductive health is discussed, and we demand that ECLAC and the governments, in honour of democracy and pluralism, also open the door to other currents,'' said Gálvez.

The ''pro-life'' movement is against birth control, divorce, and same-sex unions, and advocates only the model of the traditional family headed by the husband, in which the mother transmits so-called ''family-oriented'' values.

Clashes between conservatives and women's activists are typical at meetings where the sexual and reproductive rights of women are discussed.

In the 1990s, unsafe abortions were the focus of heated debate in the United Nations.

''Despite the tension and the pressure from conservative sectors, the final outcome of the debates over the last few years was positive, including growing recognition that the need to decriminalise abortion is a legitimate human rights question,'' says a report by the non-governmental Catholics for the Right to Decide.

At the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, governments recognised that unsafe abortion was a major public health problem.

The conference recommended that abortion should not be promoted as a family planning method; the number of abortions should be reduced by guaranteeing access to contraceptives; women should have access to services to manage the complications of unsafe abortion under all circumstances; and abortion should be safe in circumstances in which it is not against the law.

In Beijing, a year later, these concepts were reaffirmed, and it was recommended that ''Member states should consider reviewing existing punitive legislation (with respect to abortion).''

Abortion remains illegal in nearly all countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Nevertheless, more than four million clandestine abortions are practiced in Latin America every year, according to the United Nations population fund (UNFPA).

Complications of unsafe abortion account for 21 percent of maternal mortality in Latin America, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Some 20 million clandestine abortions are performed around the world every year, and around 78,000 women die as a result of complications, adds UNFPA.

For every 1,000 women of child-bearing age (15-49), an estimated 30 unsafe abortions are performed in Latin America. In addition, around 2,200 women and teenage girls are hospitalised in the region daily due to complications from unsafe abortions.

''I hope that in Beijing+10 there is more tolerance, and that it is made clear that not all social groups advocate anti-family practices like abortion and homosexuality,'' said the director of Provida.

U.S. pressure against the legalisation of abortion has been felt elsewhere in the region in the past few months.

In late April, six lawmakers from Bush's governing Republican Party sent a letter to Uruguay's senators just before they voted on a reproductive health bill that would have legalised abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

''We encourage you in this historic time in your country...to (vote) against this pro-abortion bill and also to refuse to leave it up to a referendum,'' said the letter faxed from the office of New Jersey Representative Christopher Smith.

The bill was defeated by just three votes. (END/2004)

Iraq - torture authorization report 2

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/30/iraq/printable614905.shtml

Ashcroft: Bush Hasn't OK'd Torture
WASHINGTON, June 8, 2004


Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday he was not aware of any order by President Bush that would violate U.S. laws or treaties banning torture of military prisoners captured in Iraq or elsewhere in the war on terrorism.

But he steadfastly refused to comment directly about a policy paper on this issue, or say whether Mr. Bush ever responded to it.

A March 2003 Pentagon memo for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found that the president could not be bound by laws and treaties against torture — and that U.S. agents following presidential orders might not be liable either.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that in August 2002, the Justice Department told the White House and CIA that torture of terrorism suspects "may be justified" and that laws against torture may be "unconstitutional: in the war on terror.

The Justice Department lawyers who wrote the 2003 policy paper were not identified by name and were part of a working group writing a policy governing interrogation techniques to be used at the prison for terrorist suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The lawyers' rationale was that the president was not necessarily bound by anti-torture laws or treaties because of his authority as commander-in-chief to protect national security.

"This administration rejects torture," Ashcroft declared under tense questioning by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But, Ashcroft did say, "The Department of Justice will both investigate and prosecute individuals who violate the law. The Torture Act is a law that we include in that violation."

Said Ashcroft: "The president of the United States has not ordered any conduct that would violate the Constitution of the United States, that would violate not one of the laws enacted by the Congress, or that would violate any of the various treaties."

Sen. Joseph Biden asked Ashcroft whether there is any presidential order that "immunizes (from prosecution) interrogators of al Qaeda suspects?"

"The president has issued no such order," Ashcroft replied.

The attorney general said the policy memo on this issue would not be made available to the committee, however. And Ashcroft said that while he respected the constitutional right of Congress to ask questions, "there are certain things that, in the interest of the executive branch operating effectively, that I think it is inappropriate for the attorney general to say."

"Do you think torture might be justified — not a memorandum — just a question to you, attorney general of the United States?" Biden asked.

"I am not going to issue or otherwise discuss hypotheticals. I will leave that to academics," Ashcroft replied.

"John, you sound like you're in the State Department," Biden shot back.

"I condemn torture. … I don't think it's productive, let alone justified," Ashcroft responded.

Biden told Ashcroft "there's a reason why we (Congress) sign those (anti-torture) treaties" and it is to protect U.S. military personnel.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Monday that the final set of interrogation methods adopted for use at Guantanamo in April 2003 are humane, legal and useful — and more restrictive than the methods some had proposed.

Di Rita described the paper as a staff legal analysis that was part of an internal administration debate on how to obtain intelligence from al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody, within the confines of a standard of humane treatment. The intelligence sought was to prevent terrorist attacks, he said.

The paper discusses both domestic law and international treaties governing torture and the treatment of prisoners, and concludes Mr. Bush has vast legal authority for a number of reasons.

Mary Ellen O'Connell, a professor of international law at Ohio State University who has seen the draft paper, called its arguments unconvincing.

"In every case it finds defenses, narrower readings of that statute, or justifications that allow torture in a wide variety of circumstances," she said. "The legal analysis is weak."

Ultimately, the Pentagon adopted a set of 24 interrogation methods it would use at Guantanamo, Di Rita said. The majority are psychological tricks and techniques described in Army field manuals. However, The New York Times has previously reported that some al Qaeda detainees have been deprived of sleep, food and medicine, and at least one has been dunked in water until he thinks he might drown.

In addition to international treaties, United States laws bar torture.

The Third Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war states that "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever."

The United Nations convention on torture, which the United States has signed, says torture consists of "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession … "

In U.S. law, torture is defined as "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control."

U.S. law defines "severe mental pain or suffering" as "prolonged mental harm" caused by "the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering … (or) the threat of imminent death."

Elsewhere, the British government said Tuesday that military police had investigated or were continuing to probe 75 cases of alleged abuse, civilian deaths and injuries in Iraq — more than double the number it previously disclosed.

The Ministry of Defense said of the 75 cases, 30 probes were in progress and 37 had been completed and no further action was being taken. Eight other investigations had been completed and authorities were contemplating whether to press charges.

Of those, one relates to the death of an Iraqi prisoner in custody, and another to a prisoner being injured. The other cases relate to four civilians being killed and two injured during military operations.

Iraq - torture authorization report

RIGHTS-U.S.:
New Evidence Prison Torture Was Approved at Top Levels

Jim Lobe

A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, that the military would never resort to such practices in the ''war on terrorism''.

WASHINGTON, Jun 7 (IPS) - Short excerpts of the report, which was drafted by Defence Department lawyers, were published in the Wall Street Journal Monday. The text asserts, among other things, that the president, in his position as commander-in-chief, has virtually unlimited power to wage war, even in violation of U.S. law and international treaties.

''The breadth of authority in the report is wholly unprecedented,'' says Avi Cover, a senior attorney with the U.S. Law and Security programme of Human Rights First, formerly known as Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

''Until now, we've used the rhetoric of a president who is 'above the law', but this document makes that (assertion) explicit; it's not a metaphor anymore,'' he added.

While it is unknown whether Bush himself ever saw or approved the report, it was classified ''secret'' by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on Mar. 6, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to the Journal.

A full copy of the report is expected to be published on the Internet Monday night, according to sources who declined to say on which website it would appear.

The report's partial publication comes amid growing charges that the Pentagon is engaged in a cover-up of the full extent of abuses committed by U.S. forces in their anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, Iraq, at the U.S. naval facility at Guantánamo, Cuba, and elsewhere.

The abuse scandal first came to light in April when news organisations published photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad that took place last October and November. Seven soldiers have been charged in those cases.

While the Pentagon and the White House have claimed that the abuses were committed by a ''few bad apples'', evidence of much more widespread abuse, including severe beatings and torture, has steadily accumulated over the past month.

Former detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan, as well as other prisons in Iraq, have complained about similar tactics used against them, leading a number of lawmakers and other observers to conclude that such treatment was authorised or at the least condoned by authorities at much higher levels.

The Defence Department has itself launched six investigations or reviews into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, but none is designed to probe the role of senior officers or the civilian leadership in the Pentagon or relevant policies that they may have developed.

At the same time, lawmakers from the governing Republican Party have been actively discouraged from undertaking investigations of their own.

''Rumsfeld has really launched a massive cover-up operation within the Department of Defence,'' according to Scott Horton, president of the International League for Human Rights and an expert on military law with the New York City Bar Association. ''The investigations going on right now have all the hallmarks of a cover-up.''

Horton was approached in April 2003 by senior uniformed military attorneys (Judge Advocates General, or JAGs), who were troubled by detention and interrogation policies they said were being developed by political appointees at the Pentagon.

''It's quite a reasonable inference to say that this report (the subject of the Journal articles) is what rattled them,'' Horton said. ''We knew they were extremely upset about something very much like this.''

The report, according to the Journal account, was initiated as a result of the failure of interrogators at the Guantánamo base, where suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members are being held, to obtain information using conventional techniques. It was drafted by a working group appointed by the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes, who last June assured Congress that the military could fully abide by the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Much of the text, which reportedly runs more than 100 pages, deals with legal issues relating to interrogation tactics. But, according to the Journal, at its core the report asserts that nothing is more important, including the normal restrictions on torture, than ''obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens.''

The report further cited possible defences for the use of torture, including the ''necessity'' for such methods to prevent an attack, or ''superior orders'', also known as the Nuremberg defence that supposedly absolves the responsibility of subordinates for following orders from others higher up the chain of command.

Both defences are inconsistent, however, with U.S. law and the U.N.'s CAT, which was ratified by the United States in 1994. It states that ''no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,'' and that orders from superiors ''may not be invoked as a justification of torture.''

U.S. army field manuals also say that soldiers are prohibited from obeying any superior order to torture someone.

In its report, the working group took the position that neither the U.S. Congress, the courts, nor international law could interfere with the president's powers to wage war. That means, according to the report, that the president himself is not bound by U..S. law, such as the federal Torture Statute or the constitutional ban on ''cruel and unusual'' punishment.

''In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority,'' the document stated, adding later that ''without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes (against torture or abuse) are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority'' to wage war.

''What's most terrifying about this is the argument that the administration has been making since 9/11 -- that the president has unlimited power to do whatever he deems necessary,'' said Cover. ''It doesn't matter what Congress says, what the constitution says, or what international law says.''

But the report also bolsters the growing belief that easing the rules governing interrogations was a top-level policy decision that better explains why reports of abuses are so widespread.

''If anyone still thinks that the only people who dreamt up the idea about torturing prisoners were just some privates and corporals at Abu Ghraib, this document should put that myth to rest,'' said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.

''It's not hard to see how these abstract arguments made in Washington led to appalling and systematic abuses that ended up doing huge damage to U.S. interests,'' he said.

''Effectively what you've got here is a group of government attorneys trying to justify war crimes,'' Horton told IPS. ''It makes a mockery of Haynes' statement about adhering to the CAT and Bush's assurances that the U.S. would not torture or subject detainees to cruel or inhumane treatment.''

''If we apply the same rules to ourselves as we have advocated in the international tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda (that the civilian leadership is responsible for war crimes committed by their militaries), then Donald Rumsfeld is in very serious trouble."

(END/2004)

Iraq - Allawi built support in US

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-02-allawi-rise_x.htm

Allawi's ascent follows extensive PR campaign
By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
Iraq's new prime minister waged an expensive lobbying and public relations campaign beginning last year to build political support — not in Baghdad, but in Washington.

Newly appointed PM Iyad Allawi focused on cultivating support in Washington rather than in Baghdad.

Iyad Allawi benefited from at least $340,000 in spending for Washington lawyers and lobbyists and New York PR agents, all paid for by a wealthy Iraqi expatriate who lives in London.

Allawi's selection last week by his colleagues in the interim Iraqi Governing Council testified to his political skills. But some analysts said his campaign in Washington also had been a major help.

"It was a bid for influence, and it was money well spent," said Danielle Pletka, a Middle East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Allawi has always assumed, in many ways correctly, that he didn't need a constituency in Iraq as long as he had one in Washington."

The lobbying was coordinated by the consulting business of Patrick Theros, a former U.S. ambassador to the country of Qatar who knew Allawi. It hired the law firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and the New York public relations firm of Brown Lloyd James. Theros referred inquiries to PR representatives in the Persian Gulf who could not be reached.

Lobbying records show that the law firm engaged in a flurry of contacts on Allawi's behalf beginning in late October. Most were aimed at setting up meetings with influential members of Congress and their staffs, administration officials, think tanks and journalists.

The contacts included the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.; House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas; and Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Affairs Committee.

Other calls went to officials at the National Security Council, Vice President Cheney's office, the Defense Department, the CIA and three influential Washington think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution.

Allawi has worked for the CIA and was in Washington as recently as December to do work there. But many of the meetings arranged by the law firm fell through because of scheduling problems.

Allawi is a member of the Iraqi National Accord, a party made up largely of exiled former members of Saddam Hussein's military. He was trying to warn Washington officials that the Bush administration policy of expunging all former members of Saddam's Baath Party from the new government had gone too far. Barring all people with Baathist backgrounds would make it more difficult to reconstitute an Iraqi army, Allawi said.

Allawi was a member of the Baath Party from 1961 to 1971, when he fled to Lebanon and then to London. Trained as a neurologist, he was almost hacked to death by Saddam's agents in 1978.

Allawi's views were promoted by Mashal Nawab, a London physician whose family is wealthy because of Middle Eastern oil investments. Nawab paid Theros for the lobbying work as "a close friend and admirer" of Allawi, according to the lobbying disclosures.

Preston Gates was paid $302,700 for its work, and Brown Lloyd James was paid $37,500, according to the documents. Representation by those two firms ended in February. The Theros firm, which continues to lobby, was being paid $10,000 a month.

Economy - tax cuts

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0601-07.htm

Published on Tuesday, June 1, 2004 by the New York Times
Dooh Nibor Economics
by Paul Krugman

Last week The Washington Post got hold of an Office of Management and Budget memo that directed federal agencies to prepare for post-election cuts in programs that George Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. These include nutrition for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeland security. The numbers match those on a computer printout leaked earlier this year — one that administration officials claimed did not reflect policy.

Beyond the routine mendacity, the case of the leaked memo points us to a larger truth: whatever they may say in public, administration officials know that sustaining Mr. Bush's tax cuts will require large cuts in popular government programs. And for the vast majority of Americans, the losses from these cuts will outweigh any gains from lower taxes.

It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can't back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn't want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don't believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

Still, won't most families gain something? No — because the tax cuts must eventually be offset with spending cuts.

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It's as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

The administration has not, of course, explained how it intends to pay the bill. But unless taxes are increased again, the answer will have to be severe program cuts, which will fall mainly on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — because that's where the bulk of the money is.

For most families, the losses from these cuts will far outweigh any gain from lower taxes. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 80 percent of all families will end up worse off; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will soon come out with a more careful, detailed analysis that arrives at a similar conclusion. And the only really big beneficiaries will be the wealthiest few percent of the population.

Does Mr. Bush understand that the end result of his policies will be to make most Americans worse off, while enriching the already affluent? Who knows? But the ideologues and political operatives behind his agenda know exactly what they're doing.

Of course, voters would never support this agenda if they understood it. That's why dishonesty — as illustrated by the administration's consistent reliance on phony accounting, and now by the business with the budget cut memo — is such a central feature of the White House political strategy.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush's calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I'm not engaging in class warfare. They are.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Iraq - Brahimi calls Bremer dictator

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0603-01.htm

Published on Thursday, June 3, 2004 by Knight-Ridder
UN's Brahimi: Bremer the 'Dictator of Iraq' in Shaping Iraqi Government
by Tom Lasseter

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Lakhdar Brahimi, wrapping up his U.N. mission to bring an interim government to Iraq, looked a little tired and disheartened Wednesday as he said the compromise he negotiated was the best possible under American control.

When the U.S.-appointed Governing Council announced this week that it had selected a new prime minister, Brahimi seemed to be caught flat-footed. The man tapped for the post, Iyad Allawi, has close ties to the CIA. Almost immediately after being named prime minister, he called for the United States to keep its troops in Iraq, a position unpopular with many Iraqis.

Asked how big a role the American administration had in forming the government and selecting the prime minister and president, Brahimi reminded reporters that American Ambassador L. Paul Bremer runs things in Iraq.

"Bremer is the dictator of Iraq," he said. "He has the money. He has the signature."

He later added: "I will not say who was my first choice, and who was not my first choice ... I will remind you that the Americans are governing this country."

Sadoun al Dulame, the head of a Baghdad research organization and polling center, said he spoke with Brahimi last week and that the diplomat was discouraged.

"He was very disappointed, very frustrated," al Dulame said. "I asked him why he didn't say that publicly (and) he said, `I am the U.N. envoy to Iraq, how can I admit to failure?'"

Brahimi arrived in Iraq in February with orders to evaluate whether elections were feasible in the short term and, if not, to find an alternative.

A vague U.S. caucus plan had fallen through because of opposition from Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al-Sistani, who demanded either elections or U.N. involvement. Tens of thousands of Shiites had marched through Baghdad the month before, many of them threatening violent revolt if there were no elections.

It was a daunting stage for diplomacy, even for Brahimi, a former minister for foreign affairs of Algeria whose diplomatic career stretches back to his days as a National Liberation Front representative in 1956, during Algeria's struggle for independence.

Brahimi spent a lot of his time in Iraq listening to Iraqis from all walks of life and pieced together an expansive, nuanced picture of the nation and its needs. He concluded that immediate elections wouldn't work.

He then went to the table with U.S. administrators and the nation's interim Governing Council for weeks of negotiations that involved sharp dissent, political jockeying and leaks to the press.

In the end, a new government formed, announcements were made and even al-Sistani, according to reports from Najaf, accepted the result.

Reflecting on it all, Brahimi said it was "a sometimes extremely difficult negotiation process" and added, "You in the press had a field day."

After he finished speaking, he walked off from the podium, alone. A U.N. banner was tacked on the wall behind him, waiting to be taken down and replaced by the Americans in time for the next news conference.

© Copyright 2004 Knight-Ridder

###

Iraq - Iraqi & US media opinion

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-democracy-polls.html

FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 112 W. 27th Street New York, NY 10001
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Ignoring Iraqi Opinion in the Name of Democracy

June 2, 2004

Despite growing calls from within the foreign policy establishment for a reconsideration of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, most mainstream pundits and commentators continue to argue that the U.S. has no choice but to tough it out. According to a survey of editorial opinion by Editor & Publisher (5/7/04), the trade publication of the newspaper industry, "the vast majority of America's large newspapers favored this approach to Iraq: Stay the course."

But with resistance to the U.S.-led occupation forces showing no signs of fading away, some journalists have cast a worried glance at Iraqi public opinion. Establishing a democratic government responsive to popular wishes is the main rationale for keeping U.S. soldiers in Iraq. So if ordinary Iraqis reject the coalition's continued military presence, defending the mission becomes an increasingly awkward task.

In recent weeks, two important scientific polls of Iraqi opinion have been published, and neither offered much solace for those who support staying the course. A Gallup poll conducted mostly in late March-- before the recent sieges of Fallujah and Najaf-- showed that "a solid majority support an immediate military pullout." (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-poll-cover_x.htm). Fifty-seven percent said the coalition should "leave immediately" rather than "stay longer" (36 percent).

Among respondents in Shi'ite and Sunni Arab areas-- that is, leaving out Kurdish respondents-- the numbers favoring an immediate pullout were even higher: 61 percent to 30 percent among Shi'ites and 65 percent to 27 percent among Sunnis. In Baghdad, where U.S. forces are concentrated, the numbers were highest of all: 75 percent favored an immediate pullout, with only 21 percent opposed.

Overall, 55 percent of Shi'ites and 57 percent of Sunnis said attacks against coalition forces were at least sometimes justified, while the proportion of Baghdadis who believe this has risen to 67 percent, up from 36 percent the last time Gallup asked them this question a year ago.

Meanwhile, according to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is partly funded by the State Department and has coordinated its work with the Coalition Provisional Authority, more than half of all Iraqis-- including the Kurds-- want an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, up from 17 percent last October. The same poll found that 68 percent of Iraqis support Moqtada al-Sadr, including a third who say they "strongly support" him (Financial Times, 5/20/04; Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/9/04).

The polls cited above are the only scientific measures of recent Iraqi opinion in existence. Yet despite these clear signs that Iraqis want U.S. troops out, some journalists have clung to hopes, unsupported by real evidence, that the bulk of the population still quietly supports an American presence.

"For Americans grasping for a reason to stay optimistic about their experiment in Iraq, it may be this," wrote the New York Times' Ian Fisher (5/23/04): "There are still far more people... who are skeptical of, and maybe even hate, the Americans but see them as the only way to save themselves." As evidence for this, Fisher cited a poll. But it was not either of the scientific surveys released by professional polling agencies lately. Instead, it was a tally conducted by Sadim Samir, a 23-year-old political science student at the University of Baghdad, who "canvassed five neighborhoods" of Baghdad for a "class paper."

"The answer that everyone gave was, 'It's been a year, and they have done nothing for us,'" he said. "But after that I asked, 'Do you want them to leave?' And they all said, 'No. It's going to be more chaotic.'" Somehow, Samir apparently found 100 percent of Baghdadis opposed to a U.S. pullout, even though Gallup, with its 3,000-respondent sample size, found 75 percent of them favoring one immediately.

A column from New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman (5/16/04) likewise posited the existence of an Iraqi "silent majority" that firmly rejects al-Sadr. Citing a demonstration held in Najaf to protest fighting between the cleric and American forces, Friedman asked: "Will the silent majorities in both countries [Iraq and Israel] finally turn against these extremist minorities to save their future?"

A USA Today editorial (5/25/04) played dumb about the depth of support for anti-coalition attacks, asserting that "the number of attackers and the extent of their support among Iraqis angry about the U.S. occupation are unknown"-- even though the Gallup poll cited above was conducted on behalf of USA Today and was discussed at length in its pages (4/28/04).

Following the recent cease-fire deal between the U.S. and the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr, Fox News' all-star pundit panel concluded that Sadr lacked genuine popular support (Special Report, 5/26/04). "Al-Sadr is on the run," declared Charles Krauthammer. "The insurgency has failed. He did not have popular support. Sadr was caught between the anvil of Shiia, who didn't like him, who opposed him, and the hammer of American military. And he is powder."

"He said uncle!" chimed in Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard. Centrist commentator Jeff Birnbaum agreed with his co-panelists about Sadr's lack of support. None of the men mentioned the Iraqi poll showing two-thirds of the population supporting Sadr. Days later, the cease-fire began faltering.

Although some prominent pundits have become more forthright about the evidence on Iraqi public opinion-- Newsweek writer Fareed Zakaria cited data on support for al-Sadr in a May 24 column-- others continue to appear squeamish about delivering the bad news. Yet as the media continue to report on the purported handover of sovereignty in Iraq this summer, they cannot afford to ignore the only hard evidence about how Iraqis themselves perceive the situation.

Iraq - AI says abuses not isolated

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=23916

IRAQ:
Abu Ghraib Cases Not Isolated, Says Amnesty

Sanjay Suri

The abuses committed by U.S. agents in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad are not isolated cases, Amnesty International says in its annual report published Wednesday.

London, May 26 (IPS) - Amnesty had handed in a report documenting abuses by the U.S. government long before the photographs of abuse surfaced, prompting Amnesty secretary-general Irene Khan to remark that accountability in the United States is ”better generated by Kodak.”

Amnesty has been investigating human rights violations including allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by coalition forces for more than a year.

”Testimonies from former detainees indicates a similar pattern of abuse,” the Amnesty report says. ”Detainees were forced to lie face down on the ground, handcuffed, hooded or blindfolded during arrest. During interrogation they were reportedly repeatedly beaten, restrained for prolonged periods in painful positions, while some were also subjected to sleep deprivation, prolonged forced standing, and exposed to loud music and bright lights.”

Amnesty says that addressing these incidents must be a priority if the Iraqi people are to live free of brutal and degrading practices. ”For Iraq to have a sustainable and peaceful future, human rights must be a central component of the way forward,” it says in its report.

The Amnesty report cites several case histories. Among them:

- Khreisan Khalis Aballey, 39, was arrested at his home in Baghdad on April 30, 2003 because coalition forces thought he knew the whereabouts of a Ba'ath party member. During his interrogation at Baghdad's airport detention facility, he was made to stand or kneel facing a wall for seven- and-a-half days, hooded, and handcuffed tightly with plastic strips. A bright light was placed next to his hood whilst distorted music was played. He reported that a U.S. soldier stamped on his foot, tearing off one of his toenails.

- Abdallah Khudhran al-Shamran, a Saudi, reported after his release that he had been subjected to electric shocks. Other torture methods reportedly included being suspended from his legs and having his penis tied. He also reported sleep deprivation through the playing of constant loud music.

- Shakir, a 30-year-old taxi driver from Basra was arrested with his friend by British soldiers on April 10 2003. Shakir alleged that British soldiers hit him on the mouth and broke one of his teeth. He said ”they put a hood over my head and tied my hands behind my back, every now and then one or two soldiers would come and kick me, it lasted all night. When I asked for water, they beat me, I was bleeding from the mouth but they would not take me to the bathroom to wash it.”

Among detainees who died in custody, some died in circumstances suggesting that torture was the cause of death, Amnesty reports.

Baha Dawud al-Maliki was among eight Iraqi hotel workers arrested on Sep 14 2003 by British soldiers in Basra. All eight were reportedly subjected to severe beatings by the soldiers. Three days later Baha's father was handed his son's body, severely bruised and covered in blood.

Amnesty quotes a 50-year-old woman who was accused of hosting Ba'athists in her house, which she denied. She told Amnesty in February this year: ”Inside a bathroom in front of our cell -- which measured about two by three metres -- the American intelligence, day and night were conducting their investigations with the male inmates.

”They used to bring the male prisoners to this bathroom/interrogation room, completely naked and with a black hood over their heads. The hood had a string attached to it which an American soldier would hold in order to pull the prisoner in the direction he wanted him in.”

The Amnesty report says she recalled an incident when Abu Ghraib was once hit with mortars. Some of the inmates held in the tents cheered and demonstrated. In order to punish them, she said, some Americans brought in 14 male inmates naked and handcuffed, and asked them to open their legs. They beat them up from behind until they fell on the floor, again asked them to open their legs and beat them from behind in a way to hurt their genital organs. There were many screams, she stated.

During that night 14 inmates were sent to the hospital, according to the woman's account quoted by Amnesty. Another punishment was to make prisoners walk on all fours, and soldiers would pull them from the hoods covering their heads.

Whenever they brought in a new prisoner, they would always bring in a block of ice. The interrogation sessions were followed, a few hours later, by a visit to the prisoner, who by then would be unconscious, by two doctors, an American and an Iraqi. The prisoners were invariably taken out of the interrogation room unconscious, she told Amnesty.

Amnesty had first raised concerns about torture of detainees as early as July 2003 when it issued the report 'Iraq: Memorandum on concerns relating to law and order', which formed the basis for Amnesty's talks with officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad.

”Military action in Iraq was touted as the way to democracy and freedom,” Khan said at the launch of the report. ”Instead it opened the path to insurgency, endangering Iraqis as well as coalition forces. It led to torture in the prisons, and killings on the streets, the detention of thousands of Iraqis and the death of more than 10,000 civilians.”

The UN Security Council must now focus not just on ”the formal trappings of Iraqi sovereignty but on a genuine effort to ensure the human rights of the Iraqi people and clarify where that responsibility lies and how it will be discharged,” Khan said.

She added: ”There is a real risk that Iraq could become another Afghanistan, the graveyard of failed strategies and false promises, endangering people in the country and around the world.” (END/2004)

Iraq - ICRC says 90 % of prisoners a mistake

http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=23961

IRAQ:
They Should Never Have Been in Prison

Aaron Glantz

Largely lost amidst the horrors of the graphic torture photographs that continue to emerge out of Abu Grahib is a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross published a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal.

BAGHDAD, May 31 (IPS) - In its report the ICRC, the only organisation besides the United States military that has been allowed to inspect the prison wrote that ”ninety percent of captives were caught by mistake.”

Ninety percent? How is that possible, you ask?

Consider the case of mechanic Salahadul Karem. The middle class Sunni was sitting in his Baghdad home with his family last winter when the U.S. Army swept through his neighbourhood with dozens of soldiers in humvees.

”They arrested everyone,” he says -- every man at least. Karem says he was taken away along with his elder brother and his 14-year-old brother who suffers from severe mental retardation. Most neighbours were also taken away, and incarcerated at a nearby U.S. military base for questioning.

”They were looking for someone who had been attacking their base,” he recalls. ”His name was Mazen. So they kept asking us 'Are you Mazen? Who is Mazen?'.”

Karem says his family was held for two days before authorities located Mazen and they were released. He was lucky. He was not taken to Abu Grahib, but he hardly feels secure in his home.

”Two months later they came again looking for someone else,” he says. Again, they took his family to the military base for interrogation before releasing them a few days later. ”The Americans don't know the people so they don't know who their enemies are. But every time they do this they make more enemies and now I hate the Americans.”

Iraqis taken to Abu Grahib are not given trials where they can prove their innocence, or even where guilt could be established. They are simply arrested, incarcerated, and interrogated by occupation forces. If their interrogators decide they are innocent, they are released. If prison authorities think they are resistance fighters, they are kept behind bars.

Outside the gates of Abu Grahib, a man of slight build sits in the dirt next to the razor wire, waiting for his turn to see his brother rounded up in a raid a few months before. He wears the blue and gold uniform of Erinys, the multinational security firm contracted by Halliburton to guard Iraq's oil infrastructure.

This is the second time he has had an appointment to see his brother. ”The first time I came with a lawyer,” he explains. ”But the American guards told me no lawyers were allowed in the prison. They said visiting was only for relatives and they turned me away. So this time I came by myself.”

He says he doubts a lawyer would make much difference anyway. Prisoners who have been released have told him the Americans had told them they think his brother is innocent, and will be released soon.

Not everyone is so optimistic.

Only a few of the families waiting outside Abu Grahib have been granted a visit. And many of those with loved ones in American custody have not even been told where their family members are being held.

Zahara Ibd Ali's 26-year-old son was arrested by the U.S. military a year ago in a raid that also destroyed her house. She has heard rumours that American troops killed him, but she has not yet given up hope.

”I've been to every prison in Iraq,” she says, rattling off a list of American detention centres from Tikrit in the north to Basra in the south. ”Whenever anyone tells me a place I go there.”

She says she has sold almost everything she owns in her search for her son. ”I am even ready to sell my pots because I don't have any money to go anywhere any more. It's not a problem if they just give me the dead body of my son. If he's alive they have to let me see him and if he's dead they have to bring me his body.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross says in its report that the coalition forces have failed to set up a system families of captives could use, creating a situation the report calls ”missing in custody”. It says the reluctance of U.S. troops to give information is creating increasing rage among Iraqis against occupation forces.

”We know their people and we know what they are thinking,” says Abu Tayiff. His sister's son has been behind bars for three months. No one has been allowed a visit. ”We know the best way to deal with them is through the resistance.” (END/2004)

Media - corporate influence - MTV & "Super Size Me"

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=518186§ion=news

"Super Size Me" gets downsized by MTV
Wed May 26, 2004 11:00 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cable network MTV has refused to air advertisements for documentary "Super Size Me," a critical look at the health impact of a fast-food-only diet, its distributors say.
Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films said in a statement the cable TV channel targeted to young audiences told them the ads are "disparaging to fast-food restaurants".

An MTV spokeswoman disputed the claim and said the network was willing to run the commercial but the distributors turned it down. She did not provide details of the negotiations.

MTV and VH1 are owned by media giant Viacom, which depends on advertising for a major portion of its revenues.

The distributors also said MTV sister network VH1 was planning to use clips from the movie in a program called "Best Week Ever", but the clips were pulled before the show aired.

For "Super Size Me," director Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but food from McDonald's restaurants over a 30-day period, and if asked whether he wanted the larger, "supersize" meal, he always said yes.

Over the month, he gains weight and his health declines. Documenting the impact are not only the cameras but also his doctors. Spurlock mixes in various facts and figures about food and dieting as he travels the United States talking to health and food experts in 20 cities.

In March, McDonald's said it would eliminate its supersize menu options by year-end. At that time, a company spokeswoman said the decision was unrelated to the movie.

"Super Size Me" has been a hit at box offices by documentary standards, and it earned Spurlock the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary director at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

The film began playing in U.S. cinemas about two weeks ago and rose to No. 10 on domestic theatre box office charts this past week. It has grossed $2.9 million in ticket sales (1.6 million pounds) -- a hit for a documentary -- and last weekend scored a per screen average of $6,759, just behind No. 2 film "Troy" with $7,014.

The film expands to 165 screens from 148 for the upcoming Memorial Day Holiday weekend, which the MTV ads had been timed to promote, a spokesman for the distributors said.

Iraq - Halliburton Cheney ties

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/politics/printable620517.shtml

Cheney Linked To Halliburton Deal
WASHINGTON, June 1, 2004


A Pentagon e-mail indicates that a multimillion-dollar Halliburton contract for Iraqi reconstruction was "coordinated" with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the company's former chief executive, a newsmagazine reports.

Time magazine says the March 5, 2003 e-mail from an unknown Army Corps of Engineers official says Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave his deputy Douglas Feith the authority to "execute" the contract for restoring Iraq's oil industry.
According to the magazine, the e-mail says Feith approved the contract "contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow."

"We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's (Vice President's) office."

A Cheney spokesman says the vice president "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000, and that any contact over the contract was merely to prepare the vice president for possible controversy over such a lucrative deal going to his former firm.

Halliburton took in $3.6 billion last year from contracts to serve U.S. troops and rebuild the oil industry in Iraq. Halliburton executives say the company is getting about $1 billion a month for Iraq work this year.

The firm, which won large Pentagon contracts under the Clinton administration as well as the current one, has been under intense scrutiny for its performance in Iraq.

In March, the Pentagon said it plans to withhold about $300 million in payments to the company because of possible overcharging for meals served to troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

Halliburton and its military services subsidiary, KBR, face a criminal investigation into alleged misdeeds in government work in Iraq and Kuwait. In this case, Pentagon auditors accuse KBR of overestimating the number of troops to be served meals, thus reaping millions in overcharges.

Halliburton has said any mistakes in estimating the number of troops came from having to operate in a war zone where the numbers changed quickly and unpredictably.

Halliburton's other problems include allegations of a kickback scheme by two former workers in Kuwait that prompted Halliburton to reimburse the Pentagon $6.3 million; faulty cost estimates on the $2.7 billion contract to serve troops in Iraq, including failing to tell the Pentagon that KBR fired two subcontractors; and a separate audit that accused KBR of overcharging by $61 million for gasoline delivered to serve the civilian market in Iraq last year. Halliburton has said the charges were proper.

Halliburton paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges it inflated costs on a maintenance contract at now-closed Fort Ord in California.

Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton broke the law by using a subsidiary to do business in Iran, whether the company overcharged for work done for the Pentagon in the Balkans and whether it was involved in an alleged $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria. The company admitted in 2003 that it improperly paid $2.4 million to a Nigerian tax official.

Previous reports indicate Halliburton studied the possibility of privatizing Pentagon contracts when Cheney was defense secretary, then was awarded one of the first private deals. Cheney became CEO after leaving the Pentagon.

A financial disclosure form obtained by CBSNews.com indicates that Cheney received deferred income from the firm after becoming vice president.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iraq - Army admits to holding people w/out evidence

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/international/middleeast/30ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position

May 30, 2004
Scant Evidence Cited in Long Detention of Iraqis
By DOUGLAS JEHL and KATE ZERNIKE

ASHINGTON, May 29 — Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were held in Abu Ghraib prison for prolonged periods despite a lack of evidence that they posed a security threat to American forces, according to an Army report completed last fall.

The unpublished report, by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, reflects what other senior Army officers have described as a deep concern among some American officers and officials in Iraq over the refusal of top American commanders in Baghdad to authorize the release of so-called security prisoners. Some of those prisoners were held for interrogation at Abu Ghraib in the cellblock that became the site of the worst abuses at the prison.

General Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" toward the American occupying forces. The Nov. 5 report said the process for deciding which arrested Iraqis posed security risks justifying imprisonment, and for deciding when to release them, violated the Pentagon's own policies. It also said the conditions in which they were held sometimes violated the Geneva Conventions.

General Ryder's report to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq,, was obtained by The New York Times. It was based on a review of prisons in Iraq last summer and fall and made no mention of abuses at Abu Ghraib. But it warned that the continuing influx of prisoners being arrested as the American-led occupation forces fought a persistent insurrection would strain the system set up to review each case every six months, as required by international law.

"A more disciplined system would reduce the security internee population and inherent challenge of holding Iraqis that feel they have been unjustly detained," he wrote.

The position of provost marshal general dates to the Revolutionary Army, but was re-established only last October as part of a restructuring. The provost marshal general oversees law enforcement and prisons, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan holding prisoners of war and other detainees.

Since the scope of abuses at Abu Ghraib first began to come to light late last month, the military has begun to discharge prisoners from the facility at a rapidly accelerated rate. On Friday alone, 624 Iraqi prisoners were freed from the prison, in the fourth such release in May.

But the military has offered little public explanation of the process of deciding who should be released and who should remain in prison. In Baghdad this week, the top American military spokesman in Iraq offered a vigorous defense of the procedures used by American commanders for determining which Iraqi prisoners should be freed.

"We don't put them in Abu Ghraib to detain them for a period of time or to detain them until proven innocent," said the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. "They are deemed to be a security threat by a judge through multiple sources of evidence. It's that simple.

"If they were innocent, they wouldn't be at Abu Ghraib," he said.

In interviews, senior Army officers have described senior officers on General Sanchez's staff as having been the major obstacle to releasing prisoners from Abu Ghraib. The officers have said in particular that Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq, often ruled last fall against the release of prisoners, even against the recommendation of a military police commander and military intelligence officers at the prison.

The report by General Ryder recommended that the final judgments on the release of security prisoners be elevated from the three-person review board in Iraq to the level of an assistant secretary of defense. But American commanders in Baghdad have not announced such a change in procedures.

"The percentage of persons that were released because they've served their time — that percentage is zero," said General Kimmitt when he was asked this week about the reasons for the releases. "The number that were released because they were innocent? That number, too, is zero. Persons are held at Abu Ghraib because they are determined to be security threats, imminent security threats here in country."

Tensions between American officials at the prison, including Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, and senior American officers in Baghdad, including General Fast, over the release of prisoners from Abu Ghraib last fall were first described publicly in the investigative report into the abuses by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, which emerged last month.

That report described General Fast, who headed a three-member detainee release board, as sometimes vetoing recommendations to release prisoners that were made by General Karpinski, then the commander in charge at Abu Ghraib, and Col. Marc Warren, a top legal officer on General Sanchez's staff.

A confidential report in February by the International Committee of the Red Cross said that "military intelligence officers told the I.C.R.C. that in their estimate between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake." Some of those people were released by units in the field without ever being sent to a permanent prison like the main one at Abu Ghraib, the report said.

In interviews since, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq criticized as overly cumbersome a process in which the Iraqi prisoners labeled as security detainees, as opposed to common criminals, could be freed only by the release board.

In one incident described in detail by the senior Army officer, an aggressive roundup in September brought 57 Iraqis into custody. But a review by military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib determined that only two had intelligence value and that the rest should be freed.

An American general at the headquarters in Baghdad overruled that decision, and dictated that all 57 Iraqis be kept in custody.

In addition, the officer said, early judgments about who was a security prisoner were often made in haste and in error. "But once they were tagged as security detainees, it was very hard to get them released," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern over retribution from superiors.

Only a few paragraphs of the report by General Ryder have previously been made public. They were summarized or cited in General Taguba's report, which was completed in March and represented the results of the first major Army inquiry into the abuses, and focused on the conduct of the military police. A second major report, by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay, is focusing on the role played by military intelligence, and is expected to be completed next week.

General Ryder's review last summer of American detention facilities in Iraq was the first of two separate major studies conducted at the time, when the scope of the anti-American insurgency and its impact on American prisons in Iraq was just becoming apparent.

A second study, by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the American commander at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remains classified. But public accounts by senior American commanders and Pentagon officials have said that it focused more closely on issues related to interrogation and that it included a recommendation that the military police who served as guards at the prison be integrated more closely into an interrogation process overseen by military intelligence officers.

In Baghdad this week, General Kimmitt defended the procedures used by American commanders there as being even more rigorous than those required by international law. "There is a review board that is set up that is done far more frequently than required by the Geneva Conventions where a board takes a look at that person's case," he said. "And after a period of time, when those persons are deemed to no longer be a threat to the security of the nation, then they are released."

A review of General Ryder's report and of other documents and testimony about the detention system shows that there is still considerable uncertainty over the justice of the system, which is strained by the arrests of hundreds of people each week.

General Ryder recommended that "the process of screening security internees should include intelligence findings, interrogation results and a current threat assessment." He said these analyses should be provided to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, a Pentagon civilian, who should provide "guidance for decisions" on whom to hold and whom to release, ensuring that the military was "carefully determining which detainees are to be classified as security detainees."

American officials in Baghdad have provided no indication that this recommendation was adopted. A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said in Baghdad on Friday that there were still 6,500 Iraqi detainees in Iraq, with 3,000 in Abu Ghraib alone. But he said the detainees' cases were being reviewed by military judges and lawyers, as part of an accelerated process that General Sanchez outlined in early May.

At the time of his report last November, General Ryder said that there were about 3,400 security internees in custody, and that about 900 had been released. It is not known how many prisoners now held in Iraq are classified as security internees.


John H. Cushman Jr. contributed reporting for this article.