DISPATCH FROM DOWN UNDER
Dropping Report's
Iraq Chapter Was Unusual,
Economists Say
Concern About Impact on White House's Credibility Cited
By Jonathan WeismanWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A17
At the National Security Council's request, the White House excised a full chapter on Iraq's economy from last week's Economic Report of the President, reasoning in part that the "feel good" tone of the writing would ring hollow against the backdrop of continuing violence, according to White House officials.
The decision to delete an entire chapter from the Council of Economic Advisers' annual report was highly unusual. Council members -- recruited from the top ranks of economic academia -- have long prided themselves on independence and intellectual integrity, and the Economic Report of the President is the council's primary showcase.
The withholding of a completed chapter struck some economists from both political parties as evidence of the council's waning influence.
"This is extraordinary," said William A. Niskanen, a CEA member in the Reagan White House and the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute. "The council has been unfortunately weakened."
Outgoing CEA Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw declined to comment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45323-2005Feb22.html?referrer=email
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Social Security Tactics Escalate
Unions, Business Groups Seek to Influence Debate
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Ben White
Washington Post Staff WritersWednesday,
February 23, 2005; Page E02
The battle over the possible creation of individual Social Security accounts heated up as both sides launched new tactics that were designed to influence the outcome of legislation this year.
Labor unions sent letters of protest to investment firms that either back personal accounts or belong to organizations that do. Business groups working together to support the accounts mobilized voters to show up at meetings held by lawmakers over the long Presidents' Day weekend.
President Bush has made creation of individual accounts as part of Social Security his chief domestic priority.
The union letters expressed "concern" about the investment firms' lobbying for the accounts and asked that it stop. But the letters didn't threaten to withdraw union pension funds from the management of the firms that don't change their view.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45392-2005Feb22.html?referrer=email
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Army shocked at PM's Iraq order
The leader of Australia's land forces says Prime Minister John Howard's decision to double the number of troops in Iraq came as a shock.
And Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said Mr Howard must make clear to the Australian people exactly how many more troops would be sent to Iraq and for how long.
Major General Ken Gillespie said the federal government's announcement yesterday had come as a shock.
"This is not something that people were expecting," he said in Sydney today. "We are going to be incredibly busy in order to get these people ready to deploy.
"We have got quite a lot of work on our hands over the next 10 weeks to get the troops properly prepared to make sure they have everything they need to survive the environment that we are going to put them in into and that they understand the issues associated with working in that part of the world."
Mr Howard yesterday committed to sending an additional 450 troops to Iraq and has since refused to rule out the possibility of more being deployed.
Mr Beazley said the Australian people were entitled to know the true scenario.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/23/1109046967612.html?oneclick=true
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Fake soldier's cruel hoax on Iraq 'widow'
Military police are investigating a cruel hoax in which a man wearing a US Army dress uniform falsely told the wife of a soldier her husband had been killed in Iraq.
Investigators in Savannah, Georgia, are trying to determine why the man delivered the false death notice and whether he was a soldier or a civilian wearing a military uniform.
"We're taking it extremely seriously. Whatever motivation was behind it, it was a sick thing to do," said Fort Stewart spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Whetstone.
Last month, 19,000 soldiers from the Fort Stewart-based 3rd Infantry Division deployed for their second tour of duty in Iraq. At least eight division soldiers have been killed since then.
Fort Stewart officials would not identify the Army wife who reported to military police that a man posing as a casualty assistance officer came to her door February 10.
"Right off the bat, she noticed some things were not right," Whetstone said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/23/1109046955917.html
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Iraqi women still living in fear:
Amnesty
Women and girls in Iraq are living in daily fear of physical and sexual violence - two years after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, according to a new report.
The lawlessness which followed the overthrow of the dictator's regime has made the situation worse for women as the number of killings, abductions and rapes has increased.
The Amnesty International report, Iraq: Decades of suffering - Now women deserve better, found the lack of security had forced many women out of public life and restricted their movements.
A backlash from conservative social and political forces since the 2003 United States-lead war has also lead to the murder of female political leaders and women's rights activists.
Women have been subjected to sexual threats by members of the US-led forces, and some women detained by US forces have been sexually abused, and possibly raped, the report found.
Women suffered "disproportionately" under Saddam's rule and were punished with rape and sexual violence for being political activists or members of ethnic or religious groups, Amnesty said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-women-still-living-in-fear-Amnesty/2005/02/22/1109046924298.html
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Once more into shadows in Howard's hands-off war
The explanation for this new Australian deployment to Iraq doesn't stack up.
The Prime Minister's rhetoric about Iraq being at a new "tilting" point is at odds with the official spin out of Washington and London; but if it is as dire as that, why has he found a relative holiday camp at which to station these 450 would-be defenders of a threatened democracy?
And why, after leaving Australian voters in last October's election with the idea that there would be no further deployments in Iraq, has he, seemingly out of the blue, put up Australia's hand to do a brief for which Britain had already dispatched the men of the Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment?
The numbers are messy too. The first number that leapt out at us from this part of Iraq was $95 million - the US-dollar amount the Japanese paid to the local tribes early last year to protect them from the locals.
Subsequently, 1400 Dutch troops were dispatched to watch over the 600-strong Japanese reconstruction team, members of Japan's Ground Self-Defence Forces who, under the terms of Japan's constitution, are allowed only limited use of weapons to defend themselves.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Once-more-into-shadows-in-Howards-handsoff-war/2005/02/22/1109046922439.html
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Decision hinged on the result of two elections
Election outcomes, both here and in Iraq, are the key to understanding John Howard's decision to overturn his repeated assurances that Australia had no plans to significantly increase its troop presence in Iraq.
The Coalition's thumping poll victory in October set the political preconditions for the Prime Minister to finally cede to the frequent requests from Australia's allies to boost its military commitment.
Rather than an endorsement of its oft-stated policy position on Iraq, the election heralded a new political cycle of Coalition supremacy.
Yesterday, Mr Howard said that it was just over a month after the election - November 16 to be precise - that the diplomatic wheels started moving. That was when the Dutch made their "initial" decision not to renew their deployment. In fact, the Dutch decided in June on an eight-month final deployment. But it did become clear in mid-November that it would not be overturned.
As the diplomatic and military contacts between Australia and Britain gathered pace in the lead-up to Christmas and into January, there were lingering reservations.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Decision-hinged-on-the-result-of-two-elections/2005/02/22/1109046921922.html
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Hungary calls for arrest of Australian war crimes suspect
Hungarian prosecutors have asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for an 86-year old Hungarian-born Australian suspected of murdering a Jew during World War II.
"We have received the documents from the military prosecutor's office and a judge will make a decision within 15 days (on whether to issue the arrest warrant)," said Diana Weber, spokeswoman for the military tribunal in Budapest today.
A spokesman for the military prosecutor's office, Tibor Acs, told MTI national news agency it had asked for the arrest warrant to be issued.
Charles Zentai, a Hungarian-born Australian now living in Perth, is suspected of torturing and murdering an 18-year-old Jewish man in Budapest in 1944 while serving in the army of Hitler's wartime ally Hungary.
Zentai is alleged to have fled to Australia after the war while the accomplices were caught and jailed.
If the tribunal issues the arrest warrant, the case would go to Justice Minister Jozsef Petretei who will decide whether to ask Australia to extradite Zentai.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Hungary-calls-for-arrest-of-Australian-war-crimes-suspect/2005/02/23/1109046994919.html
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Australian jailed on terror charges
A Jordanian-born Australian will spend five years in a Middle Eastern prison with hard labour after a Lebanese court found him guilty of terror-related charges, The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says.
A Lebanese military court sentenced Saleh Jamal, 29, to five years' jail on charges of possessing weapons and explosives, forging an Australian passport, forming a group and planning acts that endangered state security.
The same court in Beirut sentenced another Australian, Lebanese-born Hayssam Melhem, and another Australian resident to one year in jail.
The identity of a third Australian sentenced is yet to be confirmed.
Jamal fled Australia using a fake passport in March last year while on bail for his alleged involvement in the 1998 shooting attack on the Lakemba Police Station in south-west Sydney.
He was arrested in May on terrorism charges while trying to flee Lebanon, again using a false passport.
A DFAT spokeswoman said the department had taken a close and active interest in Jamal's case
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Australian-jailed-on-terror-charges/2005/02/24/1109180024672.html
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UK soldiers guilty of Iraq abuse
OSNABRUECK, Germany --
Two British soldiers have been found guilty of abusing Iraqi civilian prisoners at an aid camp in Basra.
At the end of a five-week courts martial at a British military base in Germany, Lance Cpl. Mark Cooley, 25, was convicted of simulating punching a prisoner and putting a trussed-up man on a forklift truck.
Cpl. Daniel Kenyon, 33, was convicted of aiding and abetting in a beating and failing to report both the incident of the simulated sex act and that involving the forklift truck.
The incidents took place during an operation against looters at Camp Bread Basket in May 2003 after the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.
A third defendant had already pleaded guilty but awaits sentencing with Kenyon and Cooley.
The abuse by the soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was captured in shocking photographs published worldwide after they were used in evidence at the trial.
The judge in charge of the courts martial said the men's "brutal," "cruel" and "revolting" behavior had "undoubtedly tarnished the international reputation of the British Army and to some extent the British nation too."
Kenyon, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northeast England, was the most senior soldier facing court martial.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/23/courtmartial/index.html
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12 dead in northern Iraq attacks
Insurgent violence in Iraq killed 12 people in a spate of attacks in the troubled northern part of the country, including a US soldier, local police and the US army said.
"A Task Force Liberty soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device," said a US army statement, adding that the blast occurred near Tuz, around 200 kilometres north of Baghdad.
The death brought to 1,474 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to a Pentagon tally.
In the key northern oil city of Kirkuk, a police officer was killed and another wounded when an unknown person opened fire on them in a restaurant at breakfast time, local officials said.
Two Iraqi civilians were killed and another seriously wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the car they were travelling in near Kirkuk, local police said.
Also in Kirkuk, two civilians were injured in a car bomb attack on a US convoy in an industrial area.
The US army had no immediate comment on the attack.
In the same city's eastern Wahda district, two Kurdish civilians were shot dead at their home by unknown attackers.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and another wounded in a mortar attack on their base early Wednesday (local time) near Dhuluiya, 75 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.
Another mortar strike on an Iraqi base near Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, killed two soldiers, an army officer said.
An Iraqi subcontractor working on an Iraqi base was killed and another wounded in an attack on their car near Suleyman Beg, 200 km north of Baghdad, the wounded man told AFP.
"The attackers concentrated on my colleague Nader Shawkat and they left as soon as they saw he was dead," said Ahmad Ghali.
"We work for the Iraqi army, not the American," he added.
In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city and a hotbed of insurgent activity, a car bomb killed two people and injured another 14, the US army said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1309627.htm
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Iraqis killed as marines enter town
Three Iraqis have been killed after US marines entered Haqlaniya, intensifying a campaign to bring Iraq's western province of al-Anbar under control.
The Iraqis were killed on Wednesday when they drove towards a building occupied by the marines. "A pickup truck drove towards the building. Iraqi soldiers waved at it to stop but they didn't stop. They didn't pay attention. They turned around, and that's when we shot them," said Major Richard Seagrist.
There were no US casualties.
A column of tanks and armoured vehicles rolled into the town, 240km west of Baghdad on the Euphrates river, before dawn and were immediately ambushed.
Marines responded with heavy machine gun fire and several tank rounds.
"We were hit by an IED (improvised explosive device), a daisy chain (three IEDs linked together) and then we took a rocket-propelled grenade," said Sergeant Larry Long.
Tackling fightersThe offensive was part of Operation River Blitz, launched this week to tackle fighters hiding out in the huge western province of al-Anbar that stretches to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7A1BD40C-B4AC-4635-B343-8FFBA52E0B0A.htm
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Beheaded Female Body Found in Northern Iraq
World in Brief:
23 February 2005,
Wednesday.
The beheaded body of a woman has been discovered in the suburbs of the town of Erbil, Northern Iraq, the Iraqi daily Sabah reported. Police say the body might of the journalist who was kidnapped two days ago in the town of Mosul. Raeda Wazzan, a journalist working for a government-funded television station, was kidnapped along with her son, aged 10.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=44934
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Pentagon probes Iraq rape claims
The US military has confirmed that it is investigating an allegation that an American soldier raped a female detainee in Iraq.
Claims of sexual misconduct by US military personnel surfaced last year during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but this is the first known case of a soldier being accused of raping a detainee.
A Pentagon spokesman says a number of allegations have been made and investigated.
He says one of them is still under investigation, while another has been closed for lack of evidence.
The spokesman says he did not know when or where the rapes are alleged to have occurred
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1309580.htm
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Sunni clerics seek to form united front against occupation of Iraq
A powerful group of Sunni Arab clerics in Iraq is forming a common front with groups who boycotted last month's elections. They are aiming to force foreign troops out of Iraq through "political activism".
//
The Association of Muslim Scholars, which aims to unite clerics in the insurgency-ravaged "Sunni triangle" has been holding meetings this week with tribal figures to forge a broad political front.
Sheikh Omar Ragheb al-Kubaisi, an association spokesman, said his group was not connected to the armed insurgency, and was seeking political rather than military ways to force coalition troops to leave.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he made it clear that the "political action" they were advocating was not the same thing as "political participation" in the new government that is about to be formed.
He did not rule out co-operating in the writing of a draft constitution, which is due to take place this year, but only if the coalition agreed to announce a withdrawal schedule for foreign troops from Iraq, among other conditions.
Securing the co-operation of Sunni Arabs is likely to be a goal of the new government, which is dominated by Shias and Kurds.
Sunni Arabs, at the urging of the association, largely boycotted the election, which has led to their under-representation in the incoming parliament.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/560dbece-8478-11d9-ad81-00000e2511c8.html
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What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
"The past is not dead.
In fact, it's not even past."
By WertherWerther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
02/23/05 "Counterpunch.org" --
Since the attacks of 11 September 2001, the American public has endured an astounding avalanche of official lies, half truths, pseudo-events [1] and sheer balderdash that will surely enter the Guinness Book of Records. Among the most persistent and infuriating lies of government, to those who have imbibed their knowledge of the past from the crystalline springs of Gibbon and von Ranke, is the misleading historical analogy. Its purpose is twofold: to relativize whatever current disaster the governing class has waltzed the hapless populace into; and to kill any usable past. The technique also has the added benefit of making government placemen sound learned at least in the estimation of an audience which gains its knowledge of the world through Fox News and other State media.Iraq is a fruitful field for detecting such historical fables. It was during the summer of 2003, as it first became evident that the natives of Mesopotamia were less than entirely enthusiastic about their liberation, that the American apparat swung into action with historical comparisons between Iraq and the occupation of Germany.Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice took to the hustings to tell the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in her characteristic school-marmish fashion, that occupied Iraq was no more of a problem than occupied Nazi Germany and look what a rousing success that turned out to be: "There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes, but as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers-called 'werewolves'-engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them-much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." [2]
http://207.44.245.159/article8150.htm
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An opportunity for productive social outreach looms on the horizon. A day is coming — maybe in weeks, maybe in months or maybe in years — when President Bush’s true-believers hit the wall of credibility.
They have been led to believe our “war on terror,” as the president calls it, pits the forces of good vs. the forces of evil. Unfortunately, every report of the United States inhumanely abusing prisoners in its care tarnishes our gold star and dirties our white hat.
It won’t be a pretty sight when Bush’s dedicated supporters reach the breaking point. Make no mistake they will finally realize that lowering ourselves to the methods of our enemies damages the ultimate cause. As one former FBI agent is quoted in a recent magazine article, “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-editorials-0221-editorial-5b18q4103.htm
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Grilling Canadian teen at Guantanamo Bay necessary,
Canadian spy agency says
Mon Feb 21, 3:41 PM ET
COLIN PERKEL
TORONTO (CP) - Canada's spy agency argues it needs to be able to interrogate a Canadian teenager held as an enemy combatant by American authorities at Guantanamo Bay as part of its fight against terrorism, documents show.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service also says the interrogations are not intended to help in any prosecution of Omar Khadr, whose family was intimately connected to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
The Toronto-born Khadr is accused of killing an American soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan (news - web sites) in July 2002, when he was 15, and could face the death penalty.
His lawyers want the Federal Court to order an end to the interrogations and instead force Ottawa to provide him "real and substantive" consular help in Cuba.
"Any efforts to limit or fetter the service's investigative powers . . . will hamper the service's ability to advise the Canadian government," William Hooper, an assistant of director of operations with CSIS, said in an affidavit obtained by The Canadian Press.
"(It would be) injurious to the public interest from a national-security perspective."
Other heavily censored documents show Canada has made several low-key approaches to Washington about Khadr.
But while U.S. authorities rebuffed Ottawa's single request for consular access, they have allowed Canadian intelligence agents, including those from Foreign Affairs, to question him on several occasions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1845&ncid=737&e=4&u=/cpress/20050221/ca_pr_on_na/khadr_abuse
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Ignore the vanity of the Bushites,
America's might is draining away
WHAT TIME is it for America?
If the Boston Tea Party was first light and the Gettysburg Address dawn, where between the sunrise and sunset of empire is the United States now? To judge from his inauguration speech on Thursday, President Bush thinks it is about time for morning coffee: much to be proud of but big tasks — maybe the proudest of all — still ahead. To end tyranny on Earth is no small ambition.
Gerard Baker, the US editor of The Times, (“Don’t believe the doubters: America’s decline and fall is a long way off yet”) strikes a slightly more sanguine note. “A presidential inauguration is a chance for America to remind the world who is boss,” he smiles, “to demonstrate that the United States is the inheritor not only of Greece’s glory, but of Rome’s reach” — but Gerard would not himself go so far: he shares American anxieties about the rise of the Asian superpowers. He is confident, though, there are tremendous reserves of energy and potential still bubbling beneath the surface. “I would not bet on America’s eclipse just yet,” he concludes. For his America, I guess, it is around lunch. An afternoon’s work is still ahead.
NI_MPU('middle');
I think it’s about half past four. For America-2005-Iraq, think of Britain-1899-Boer War. Ever-heavier burdens are being loaded upon a nation whose economic legs are growing shaky, whose hegemony is being taunted and whose sense of world mission may be faltering. “Overcommitted?” is the whisper
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-1451138,00.html
Iraq Chapter Was Unusual,
Economists Say
Concern About Impact on White House's Credibility Cited
By Jonathan WeismanWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A17
At the National Security Council's request, the White House excised a full chapter on Iraq's economy from last week's Economic Report of the President, reasoning in part that the "feel good" tone of the writing would ring hollow against the backdrop of continuing violence, according to White House officials.
The decision to delete an entire chapter from the Council of Economic Advisers' annual report was highly unusual. Council members -- recruited from the top ranks of economic academia -- have long prided themselves on independence and intellectual integrity, and the Economic Report of the President is the council's primary showcase.
The withholding of a completed chapter struck some economists from both political parties as evidence of the council's waning influence.
"This is extraordinary," said William A. Niskanen, a CEA member in the Reagan White House and the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute. "The council has been unfortunately weakened."
Outgoing CEA Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw declined to comment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45323-2005Feb22.html?referrer=email
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Social Security Tactics Escalate
Unions, Business Groups Seek to Influence Debate
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Ben White
Washington Post Staff WritersWednesday,
February 23, 2005; Page E02
The battle over the possible creation of individual Social Security accounts heated up as both sides launched new tactics that were designed to influence the outcome of legislation this year.
Labor unions sent letters of protest to investment firms that either back personal accounts or belong to organizations that do. Business groups working together to support the accounts mobilized voters to show up at meetings held by lawmakers over the long Presidents' Day weekend.
President Bush has made creation of individual accounts as part of Social Security his chief domestic priority.
The union letters expressed "concern" about the investment firms' lobbying for the accounts and asked that it stop. But the letters didn't threaten to withdraw union pension funds from the management of the firms that don't change their view.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45392-2005Feb22.html?referrer=email
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Army shocked at PM's Iraq order
The leader of Australia's land forces says Prime Minister John Howard's decision to double the number of troops in Iraq came as a shock.
And Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said Mr Howard must make clear to the Australian people exactly how many more troops would be sent to Iraq and for how long.
Major General Ken Gillespie said the federal government's announcement yesterday had come as a shock.
"This is not something that people were expecting," he said in Sydney today. "We are going to be incredibly busy in order to get these people ready to deploy.
"We have got quite a lot of work on our hands over the next 10 weeks to get the troops properly prepared to make sure they have everything they need to survive the environment that we are going to put them in into and that they understand the issues associated with working in that part of the world."
Mr Howard yesterday committed to sending an additional 450 troops to Iraq and has since refused to rule out the possibility of more being deployed.
Mr Beazley said the Australian people were entitled to know the true scenario.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/23/1109046967612.html?oneclick=true
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Fake soldier's cruel hoax on Iraq 'widow'
Military police are investigating a cruel hoax in which a man wearing a US Army dress uniform falsely told the wife of a soldier her husband had been killed in Iraq.
Investigators in Savannah, Georgia, are trying to determine why the man delivered the false death notice and whether he was a soldier or a civilian wearing a military uniform.
"We're taking it extremely seriously. Whatever motivation was behind it, it was a sick thing to do," said Fort Stewart spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Whetstone.
Last month, 19,000 soldiers from the Fort Stewart-based 3rd Infantry Division deployed for their second tour of duty in Iraq. At least eight division soldiers have been killed since then.
Fort Stewart officials would not identify the Army wife who reported to military police that a man posing as a casualty assistance officer came to her door February 10.
"Right off the bat, she noticed some things were not right," Whetstone said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/23/1109046955917.html
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Iraqi women still living in fear:
Amnesty
Women and girls in Iraq are living in daily fear of physical and sexual violence - two years after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, according to a new report.
The lawlessness which followed the overthrow of the dictator's regime has made the situation worse for women as the number of killings, abductions and rapes has increased.
The Amnesty International report, Iraq: Decades of suffering - Now women deserve better, found the lack of security had forced many women out of public life and restricted their movements.
A backlash from conservative social and political forces since the 2003 United States-lead war has also lead to the murder of female political leaders and women's rights activists.
Women have been subjected to sexual threats by members of the US-led forces, and some women detained by US forces have been sexually abused, and possibly raped, the report found.
Women suffered "disproportionately" under Saddam's rule and were punished with rape and sexual violence for being political activists or members of ethnic or religious groups, Amnesty said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-women-still-living-in-fear-Amnesty/2005/02/22/1109046924298.html
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Once more into shadows in Howard's hands-off war
The explanation for this new Australian deployment to Iraq doesn't stack up.
The Prime Minister's rhetoric about Iraq being at a new "tilting" point is at odds with the official spin out of Washington and London; but if it is as dire as that, why has he found a relative holiday camp at which to station these 450 would-be defenders of a threatened democracy?
And why, after leaving Australian voters in last October's election with the idea that there would be no further deployments in Iraq, has he, seemingly out of the blue, put up Australia's hand to do a brief for which Britain had already dispatched the men of the Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment?
The numbers are messy too. The first number that leapt out at us from this part of Iraq was $95 million - the US-dollar amount the Japanese paid to the local tribes early last year to protect them from the locals.
Subsequently, 1400 Dutch troops were dispatched to watch over the 600-strong Japanese reconstruction team, members of Japan's Ground Self-Defence Forces who, under the terms of Japan's constitution, are allowed only limited use of weapons to defend themselves.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Once-more-into-shadows-in-Howards-handsoff-war/2005/02/22/1109046922439.html
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Decision hinged on the result of two elections
Election outcomes, both here and in Iraq, are the key to understanding John Howard's decision to overturn his repeated assurances that Australia had no plans to significantly increase its troop presence in Iraq.
The Coalition's thumping poll victory in October set the political preconditions for the Prime Minister to finally cede to the frequent requests from Australia's allies to boost its military commitment.
Rather than an endorsement of its oft-stated policy position on Iraq, the election heralded a new political cycle of Coalition supremacy.
Yesterday, Mr Howard said that it was just over a month after the election - November 16 to be precise - that the diplomatic wheels started moving. That was when the Dutch made their "initial" decision not to renew their deployment. In fact, the Dutch decided in June on an eight-month final deployment. But it did become clear in mid-November that it would not be overturned.
As the diplomatic and military contacts between Australia and Britain gathered pace in the lead-up to Christmas and into January, there were lingering reservations.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Decision-hinged-on-the-result-of-two-elections/2005/02/22/1109046921922.html
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Hungary calls for arrest of Australian war crimes suspect
Hungarian prosecutors have asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for an 86-year old Hungarian-born Australian suspected of murdering a Jew during World War II.
"We have received the documents from the military prosecutor's office and a judge will make a decision within 15 days (on whether to issue the arrest warrant)," said Diana Weber, spokeswoman for the military tribunal in Budapest today.
A spokesman for the military prosecutor's office, Tibor Acs, told MTI national news agency it had asked for the arrest warrant to be issued.
Charles Zentai, a Hungarian-born Australian now living in Perth, is suspected of torturing and murdering an 18-year-old Jewish man in Budapest in 1944 while serving in the army of Hitler's wartime ally Hungary.
Zentai is alleged to have fled to Australia after the war while the accomplices were caught and jailed.
If the tribunal issues the arrest warrant, the case would go to Justice Minister Jozsef Petretei who will decide whether to ask Australia to extradite Zentai.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Hungary-calls-for-arrest-of-Australian-war-crimes-suspect/2005/02/23/1109046994919.html
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Australian jailed on terror charges
A Jordanian-born Australian will spend five years in a Middle Eastern prison with hard labour after a Lebanese court found him guilty of terror-related charges, The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says.
A Lebanese military court sentenced Saleh Jamal, 29, to five years' jail on charges of possessing weapons and explosives, forging an Australian passport, forming a group and planning acts that endangered state security.
The same court in Beirut sentenced another Australian, Lebanese-born Hayssam Melhem, and another Australian resident to one year in jail.
The identity of a third Australian sentenced is yet to be confirmed.
Jamal fled Australia using a fake passport in March last year while on bail for his alleged involvement in the 1998 shooting attack on the Lakemba Police Station in south-west Sydney.
He was arrested in May on terrorism charges while trying to flee Lebanon, again using a false passport.
A DFAT spokeswoman said the department had taken a close and active interest in Jamal's case
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Australian-jailed-on-terror-charges/2005/02/24/1109180024672.html
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UK soldiers guilty of Iraq abuse
OSNABRUECK, Germany --
Two British soldiers have been found guilty of abusing Iraqi civilian prisoners at an aid camp in Basra.
At the end of a five-week courts martial at a British military base in Germany, Lance Cpl. Mark Cooley, 25, was convicted of simulating punching a prisoner and putting a trussed-up man on a forklift truck.
Cpl. Daniel Kenyon, 33, was convicted of aiding and abetting in a beating and failing to report both the incident of the simulated sex act and that involving the forklift truck.
The incidents took place during an operation against looters at Camp Bread Basket in May 2003 after the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.
A third defendant had already pleaded guilty but awaits sentencing with Kenyon and Cooley.
The abuse by the soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was captured in shocking photographs published worldwide after they were used in evidence at the trial.
The judge in charge of the courts martial said the men's "brutal," "cruel" and "revolting" behavior had "undoubtedly tarnished the international reputation of the British Army and to some extent the British nation too."
Kenyon, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northeast England, was the most senior soldier facing court martial.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/23/courtmartial/index.html
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12 dead in northern Iraq attacks
Insurgent violence in Iraq killed 12 people in a spate of attacks in the troubled northern part of the country, including a US soldier, local police and the US army said.
"A Task Force Liberty soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device," said a US army statement, adding that the blast occurred near Tuz, around 200 kilometres north of Baghdad.
The death brought to 1,474 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to a Pentagon tally.
In the key northern oil city of Kirkuk, a police officer was killed and another wounded when an unknown person opened fire on them in a restaurant at breakfast time, local officials said.
Two Iraqi civilians were killed and another seriously wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the car they were travelling in near Kirkuk, local police said.
Also in Kirkuk, two civilians were injured in a car bomb attack on a US convoy in an industrial area.
The US army had no immediate comment on the attack.
In the same city's eastern Wahda district, two Kurdish civilians were shot dead at their home by unknown attackers.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and another wounded in a mortar attack on their base early Wednesday (local time) near Dhuluiya, 75 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.
Another mortar strike on an Iraqi base near Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, killed two soldiers, an army officer said.
An Iraqi subcontractor working on an Iraqi base was killed and another wounded in an attack on their car near Suleyman Beg, 200 km north of Baghdad, the wounded man told AFP.
"The attackers concentrated on my colleague Nader Shawkat and they left as soon as they saw he was dead," said Ahmad Ghali.
"We work for the Iraqi army, not the American," he added.
In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city and a hotbed of insurgent activity, a car bomb killed two people and injured another 14, the US army said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1309627.htm
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Iraqis killed as marines enter town
Three Iraqis have been killed after US marines entered Haqlaniya, intensifying a campaign to bring Iraq's western province of al-Anbar under control.
The Iraqis were killed on Wednesday when they drove towards a building occupied by the marines. "A pickup truck drove towards the building. Iraqi soldiers waved at it to stop but they didn't stop. They didn't pay attention. They turned around, and that's when we shot them," said Major Richard Seagrist.
There were no US casualties.
A column of tanks and armoured vehicles rolled into the town, 240km west of Baghdad on the Euphrates river, before dawn and were immediately ambushed.
Marines responded with heavy machine gun fire and several tank rounds.
"We were hit by an IED (improvised explosive device), a daisy chain (three IEDs linked together) and then we took a rocket-propelled grenade," said Sergeant Larry Long.
Tackling fightersThe offensive was part of Operation River Blitz, launched this week to tackle fighters hiding out in the huge western province of al-Anbar that stretches to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7A1BD40C-B4AC-4635-B343-8FFBA52E0B0A.htm
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Beheaded Female Body Found in Northern Iraq
World in Brief:
23 February 2005,
Wednesday.
The beheaded body of a woman has been discovered in the suburbs of the town of Erbil, Northern Iraq, the Iraqi daily Sabah reported. Police say the body might of the journalist who was kidnapped two days ago in the town of Mosul. Raeda Wazzan, a journalist working for a government-funded television station, was kidnapped along with her son, aged 10.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=44934
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Pentagon probes Iraq rape claims
The US military has confirmed that it is investigating an allegation that an American soldier raped a female detainee in Iraq.
Claims of sexual misconduct by US military personnel surfaced last year during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but this is the first known case of a soldier being accused of raping a detainee.
A Pentagon spokesman says a number of allegations have been made and investigated.
He says one of them is still under investigation, while another has been closed for lack of evidence.
The spokesman says he did not know when or where the rapes are alleged to have occurred
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1309580.htm
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Sunni clerics seek to form united front against occupation of Iraq
A powerful group of Sunni Arab clerics in Iraq is forming a common front with groups who boycotted last month's elections. They are aiming to force foreign troops out of Iraq through "political activism".
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The Association of Muslim Scholars, which aims to unite clerics in the insurgency-ravaged "Sunni triangle" has been holding meetings this week with tribal figures to forge a broad political front.
Sheikh Omar Ragheb al-Kubaisi, an association spokesman, said his group was not connected to the armed insurgency, and was seeking political rather than military ways to force coalition troops to leave.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he made it clear that the "political action" they were advocating was not the same thing as "political participation" in the new government that is about to be formed.
He did not rule out co-operating in the writing of a draft constitution, which is due to take place this year, but only if the coalition agreed to announce a withdrawal schedule for foreign troops from Iraq, among other conditions.
Securing the co-operation of Sunni Arabs is likely to be a goal of the new government, which is dominated by Shias and Kurds.
Sunni Arabs, at the urging of the association, largely boycotted the election, which has led to their under-representation in the incoming parliament.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/560dbece-8478-11d9-ad81-00000e2511c8.html
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What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
"The past is not dead.
In fact, it's not even past."
By WertherWerther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
02/23/05 "Counterpunch.org" --
Since the attacks of 11 September 2001, the American public has endured an astounding avalanche of official lies, half truths, pseudo-events [1] and sheer balderdash that will surely enter the Guinness Book of Records. Among the most persistent and infuriating lies of government, to those who have imbibed their knowledge of the past from the crystalline springs of Gibbon and von Ranke, is the misleading historical analogy. Its purpose is twofold: to relativize whatever current disaster the governing class has waltzed the hapless populace into; and to kill any usable past. The technique also has the added benefit of making government placemen sound learned at least in the estimation of an audience which gains its knowledge of the world through Fox News and other State media.Iraq is a fruitful field for detecting such historical fables. It was during the summer of 2003, as it first became evident that the natives of Mesopotamia were less than entirely enthusiastic about their liberation, that the American apparat swung into action with historical comparisons between Iraq and the occupation of Germany.Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice took to the hustings to tell the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in her characteristic school-marmish fashion, that occupied Iraq was no more of a problem than occupied Nazi Germany and look what a rousing success that turned out to be: "There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes, but as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers-called 'werewolves'-engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them-much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." [2]
http://207.44.245.159/article8150.htm
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An opportunity for productive social outreach looms on the horizon. A day is coming — maybe in weeks, maybe in months or maybe in years — when President Bush’s true-believers hit the wall of credibility.
They have been led to believe our “war on terror,” as the president calls it, pits the forces of good vs. the forces of evil. Unfortunately, every report of the United States inhumanely abusing prisoners in its care tarnishes our gold star and dirties our white hat.
It won’t be a pretty sight when Bush’s dedicated supporters reach the breaking point. Make no mistake they will finally realize that lowering ourselves to the methods of our enemies damages the ultimate cause. As one former FBI agent is quoted in a recent magazine article, “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-editorials-0221-editorial-5b18q4103.htm
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Grilling Canadian teen at Guantanamo Bay necessary,
Canadian spy agency says
Mon Feb 21, 3:41 PM ET
COLIN PERKEL
TORONTO (CP) - Canada's spy agency argues it needs to be able to interrogate a Canadian teenager held as an enemy combatant by American authorities at Guantanamo Bay as part of its fight against terrorism, documents show.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service also says the interrogations are not intended to help in any prosecution of Omar Khadr, whose family was intimately connected to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
The Toronto-born Khadr is accused of killing an American soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan (news - web sites) in July 2002, when he was 15, and could face the death penalty.
His lawyers want the Federal Court to order an end to the interrogations and instead force Ottawa to provide him "real and substantive" consular help in Cuba.
"Any efforts to limit or fetter the service's investigative powers . . . will hamper the service's ability to advise the Canadian government," William Hooper, an assistant of director of operations with CSIS, said in an affidavit obtained by The Canadian Press.
"(It would be) injurious to the public interest from a national-security perspective."
Other heavily censored documents show Canada has made several low-key approaches to Washington about Khadr.
But while U.S. authorities rebuffed Ottawa's single request for consular access, they have allowed Canadian intelligence agents, including those from Foreign Affairs, to question him on several occasions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1845&ncid=737&e=4&u=/cpress/20050221/ca_pr_on_na/khadr_abuse
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Ignore the vanity of the Bushites,
America's might is draining away
WHAT TIME is it for America?
If the Boston Tea Party was first light and the Gettysburg Address dawn, where between the sunrise and sunset of empire is the United States now? To judge from his inauguration speech on Thursday, President Bush thinks it is about time for morning coffee: much to be proud of but big tasks — maybe the proudest of all — still ahead. To end tyranny on Earth is no small ambition.
Gerard Baker, the US editor of The Times, (“Don’t believe the doubters: America’s decline and fall is a long way off yet”) strikes a slightly more sanguine note. “A presidential inauguration is a chance for America to remind the world who is boss,” he smiles, “to demonstrate that the United States is the inheritor not only of Greece’s glory, but of Rome’s reach” — but Gerard would not himself go so far: he shares American anxieties about the rise of the Asian superpowers. He is confident, though, there are tremendous reserves of energy and potential still bubbling beneath the surface. “I would not bet on America’s eclipse just yet,” he concludes. For his America, I guess, it is around lunch. An afternoon’s work is still ahead.
NI_MPU('middle');
I think it’s about half past four. For America-2005-Iraq, think of Britain-1899-Boer War. Ever-heavier burdens are being loaded upon a nation whose economic legs are growing shaky, whose hegemony is being taunted and whose sense of world mission may be faltering. “Overcommitted?” is the whisper
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-1451138,00.html
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 5:46 AM
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