Edited by author 06-02-2003 07:19 AM
More US body bags after the "Battle of Iraq" is declared Over

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/national...nted=print&position=

Some Back Home Wonder, 'Why Are People Dying?'
By MONICA DAVEY
June 2, 2003

"We won the war, so why are people dying?" asked Fran Stall, whose companion is the father of Sgt. Troy David Jenkins, who died on April 24. "I don't understand why this keeps happening. We have guys getting killed every day."

The Department of Defense reported the deaths of about 40 service members in the past six weeks. About three-fourths of the deaths came after May 1, the day President Bush formally declared the end of major combat operations.

This means about 25 % of the Total US Casualties have died after the declaration of "battle" of Iraq being over by Mr. Bush.

They have been killed in a string of sudden attacks ? assaults that have grown far more common in the past week and have begun raising questions among some families about whether there are enough United States forces in Iraq to handle mounting resistance.

Soldiers have been shot at as they stood guard at vehicle checkpoints. They have been ambushed as they traveled along roads in convoys. More of the service members have died in accidents than in attacks. A tank plunged from a riverbank. A gun went off as a soldier cleaned it. A Humvee hit a parked trailer. A helicopter crashed. A transport truck rolled over. A rocket-propelled grenade launcher malfunctioned.

Suicide Bomb Rips Bus in Kabul, Kills 3 Soldiers

Unabridged and Unedited article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...as/afghan_explosion

Suicide Bomb Rips Bus in Kabul, Kills 3 Soldiers
By TODD PITMAN
June 07, 2003

The blast was the first deadly assault on peacekeepers since they arrived in Afghanistan to bring security to the capital after the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001. The bus was taking peacekeepers to Kabul's international airport to return home ? some on leave, some after completing their mission in Afghanistan ? when the attack took place, said a spokeswoman for International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.

The attacker apparently approached the ISAF bus in a vehicle and detonated the explosives at about 8:30 a.m. on a major road on the east side of Kabul, the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base said in a statement.

Suspicion for the attack immediately fell on remnants of al-Qaida and the defeated Taliban regime, as well as fighters loyal to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The three groups have allegedly joined forces in a bid to destabilize the government of President Hamid Karzai, which is largely dependent on foreign troops for its survival. There was no claim of responsibility.

Some 5,000 peacekeepers are in Kabul. Germany and the Netherlands currently command the force but are to hand over control to NATO Aug. 11. At about that time, German and Dutch forces are to return home and be replaced by about 1,800 Canadian troops.

Since the United States broadened its anti-terrorism campaign to include Iraq, there has been a surge in violence against Westerners in the Islamic world. A May 12 attack on housing complexes in Saudi Arabia killed at least 23 people, bombings in Morocco killed 31 victims, and there have been continued guerrilla assaults on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Blair misled us all, says widow of commando

Unabridged and Unedited article at
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=413461

Lianne Seymour, whose husband was killed in the war, accuses the PM of a breach of trust

Her Story remind's me of Pink Floyd's The Wall

Blair misled us all, says widow of commando
By Severin Carrell
June 08, 2003

The widow of a British commando killed in the Iraq war has accused Tony Blair of "deceiving" her husband with misleading claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Lianne Seymour lost her husband Ian, 27, a Royal Navy communications mechanic, in a helicopter crash in Kuwait hours after the war began. She has been left to raise their son Beck, three, on her own.

Now, following the growing controversy over Iraq's "missing" arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Mrs Seymour has become convinced that the war was unjustified.

Thousands of servicemen and women will share her growing sense of personal betrayal, she claimed - and feel doubly suspicious about the next call to go to war.

The "contradictions and deceiving" by Mr Blair "disables our servicemen and women, and it must make them uneasy for future possible conflicts", she said.

"I do feel that we were misled by Mr Blair in justifying this war. I don't think it was the right time or the right way of doing things, but the result now is that Saddam isn't in command in Iraq any more.

"Let's just be hopeful that we've made this world a better place for the Iraqis at least [but] I don't think it's right that Mr Blair should mislead us and our servicemen. After all, they're the ones who are brave enough to go out there and do the job. He should at least be honest about his reasons and take warning from this that everybody was opposed to it before."

Her husband - who, after 11 years' service in the Navy, was applying for a permanent transfer to the Royal Marines - had left for war confident it was justified. "His words to my son were that he's going to make this world a better place for other little boys and girls," she said.

Her bitterness has been amplified by a series of blunders by the Ministry of Defence and US forces after Mr Seymour was killed on 21 March, along with seven other men from 3 Commando Brigade and four US troops in the Sea Knight helicopter crash.

Soon after the crash, the Navy asked Mrs Seymour to return £400 in pay covering 10 days from the date of her husband's death. Initially, Mr Blair claimed her revelation was untrue under questioning in the Commons - a denial Downing Street later retracted. At the same time, she was given three months' notice to quit their married quarters at a Royal Navy camp in Poole, Dorset.

Faced with public outrage, both requests were quickly withdrawn by the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon. The Navy has promised Mrs Seymour will be given ample time to find a new home, although she claims that she is getting little practical help to do so.

Finally, to Mrs Seymour's horror, it emerged last month that her husband's body had been incomplete when it was cremated with full military honours in April. The local coroner told her that other body parts were in another coffin in Britain and a "major limb" had been shipped to the US. She flew to the US to reclaim those remains last month, and still fears further remains may be missing.

The worst offence, Mrs Seymour argues, is that the Government is guilty of a breach of trust - the implied contract that soldiers fight just wars and die for good reasons.

"Servicemen aren't allowed to have opinions or principles on whether things are right or wrong," she said. "They have to put their whole faith and trust in the people who are sending them there."

She is also unhappy about the size of the £26,000 sum received after her husband's death, and the £6,700 taxable war widow's pension she now gets. Other wives left widowed at the naval base feel equally upset. "We're all traumatised by what's happened," she said. "They all feel let down by the treatment we've received.

"For the sake of what they've given us, they might as well not have bothered. It's impossible that we can rebuild our lives on what they've decided to award us. It's not an award. It's an insult."

Edited by author 06-11-2003 06:59 AM
Associated Press Tallies 3,240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq

Unedited and Unabridged article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...q_counting_the_dead

AP Tallies 3,240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq
June 11, 2003

Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday that the U.S. military did not count civilian casualties. "Our efforts focus on destroying the enemy's capabilities, so we never target civilians and have no reason to try to count such unintended deaths," he said.

The British Defense Ministry says it didn't count casualties either.

The killers don't count how many they kill, or even TRY to count it. What is this madness that descends on humans? Even now, they could try to count, but they won't. And then they talk about bringing "liberty" to Iraq. I guess it makes sense - Liberty is fleeing the U.S. so why not Iraq be a place for it to go.

At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation. The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll ? if it is ever tallied ? is sure to be significantly higher. Another place that keeps tallies in http://www.IraqiBodyCount.com

It will take months or more before anything like a final count emerges. One survey is being done by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, another by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which hopes to win U.S. compensation for victims or their relatives. At the least I hope that enough funds can be raised to create a "portraits of Grief" of the Dead, or a Slaughter Museum. Each one of them had a story, and we could try to preserve the story. I think, things like this, we should never forget. TO_DO Project

The AP excluded all counts done by hospitals whose written records did not distinguish between civilian and military dead, which means hundreds, possibly thousands, of victims in Iraq's largest cities and most intense battles aren't reflected in the total.

The AP count was based on records from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals ? including almost all of the large ones ? and covers the period between March 20, when the war began, and April 20, when fighting was dying down and coalition forces announced they would soon declare major combat over. AP journalists traveled to all of these hospitals, studying their logs, examining death certificates where available and interviewing officials about what they witnessed. Many of the other 64 hospitals are in small towns and were not visited because they are in dangerous or inaccessible areas. Some hospitals that were visited had incomplete or war-damaged casualty records.

By NIKO PRICE Contributing to this report were AP writers Sameer N. Yacoub, Bassem Mroue and Charles Hanley in Baghdad, Ellen Knickmeyer in Kut, Tini Tran in Basra, Louis Meixler in northern Iraq and Sharon Crenson and Richard Pyle in New York.

Iraq: a memorial

A memorial for all - including Iraqi Civilians - at Guardian website. Good effort.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/memorial/0,13313,952862,00.html

Rising Death Toll of US in Iraq, even after the Combat Phase is over

Unabridged and Unedited article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ea/iraq_war_goes_on

U.S. Commanders See Iraq Fight Continuing
by Robert Burns
June 13, 2003

When President Bush (news - web sites) declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended in Iraq (news - web sites), there was little discussion of what he meant. For all practical purposes, it seemed the war was over. It is not.

Since the president made his statement to waves of applause from sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, 47 American servicemen have died in Iraq. Commanders say there is much more fighting ahead.


The total number of American deaths in Iraq since the war began March 19 is 183, according to the Pentagon's count. The number stood at 138 on May 1; two weeks ago it was at 171.

The death toll as of Friday was far below the 382 in the 1991 Gulf War, when Bush's father was president, but the comparison is closer for those in the "hostile death" category (killed in action or died of wounds): 127 in the current war, 147 in the first Gulf War. The 382 in the earlier war and the 183 in the current one include accidents and illness.

Guantanamo Eyes Possible Execution Chamber

Story Location
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...uantanamo_detainees

Guantanamo Eyes Possible Execution Chamber
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer
June 10, 2003

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Guantanamo officials are working on plans to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in Cuba, the mission commander said.

Although no new directive has been given and no plan has been approved, a handful of experts are looking at what it will take to try, imprison and, if need be, execute detainees accused of links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or to the al-Qaida terror network.

"We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term strategies but that's all they are ? plans," Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller said in a telephone interview Monday.

Isolated on Cuba's eastern tip and out of the jurisdiction of U.S. civilian courts, Guantanamo is a likely location for U.S. military trials.

Last month, officials named Army Col. Frederic Borch III the chief prosecutor and Air Force Col. Will Gunn as chief defense lawyer for the proposed trials. The Pentagon (news - web sites) has listed 18 war crimes and eight other offenses that could be tried, including terrorist acts, and has issued rules for the tribunals.

Borch said he was looking at prosecuting at least 10 possible cases before a tribunal.

Some 680 detainees from 42 countries are in Guantanamo, categorized as unlawful combatants by the U.S. government. It has refused demands from human rights organizations to recognize them as prisoners of war. They have no constitutional rights as non-U.S. citizens being held outside U.S. territory, and none have been formally charged or allowed access to attorneys.

The cases would be decided by a panel of three to seven military officers who act as both judge and jury. Convictions could be handed down by a majority vote; a decision to sentence a defendant to death would have to be unanimous.

Some civil liberties advocates have criticized the process.

"Any further movement in the direction of trying these men in commissions that could have the power to carry out death sentences is cause for great concern," Vienna Colucci of Amnesty International's Washington D.C. office said Monday.

Miller said renovations on a building being considered as a courtroom began in March and likely will be completed next month. The building is being rewired and could be used as a courthouse with facilities for media and military officers.

There also are plans to build a permanent modular detention facility, to imprison detainees who might be sentenced to indefinite terms, and an execution chamber should any be sentenced to death, he said.

"We're getting ready so we won't be starting from scratch," Miller said, speaking while on a visit to Washington D.C.

About five people have been drafting several plans for the last six months, he said. It was unclear how much money it would take to sustain such a permanent mission.

After the detention center opened in January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld called the detainees "among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth." But, after lengthy interrogation, many are thought to be low-level former Taliban fighters and unlikely prospects for commission trials.

____

On the Net:

Rules for military tribunals: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/b0...score)bt297-03.html

Edited by author 06-14-2003 06:50 AM
Carnage and Clues Are Left in Camp Destroyed by U.S

What were these and why the complete massacre ? Oooh baby, sounds like My Lai. Or the Afghan Death Convoy. Well, if it sounds like a little hyperbole, it is probably because the lunacy of Donald Rumsfeld is rubbing on me. If he could compare falling Statues of Sadam to the Fall of the Berlin Wall ... scaling an analogy can then be infinite with no felony or crime ....

Article location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/internat...special/14CAMP.html

Carnage and Clues Are Left in Camp Destroyed by U.S
by David Rohde
June 14, 2003

RAWA, Iraq, June 13 ? The men arrived in this barren corner of western Iraq only two days ago, local residents said. Attracting little attention at first, they pitched tents on an isolated stream bed five miles from this ancient Euphrates River farming town.

Residents said the men were shepherds armed with rifles for their own protection. American officials said they were terrorists running a training camp for Iraqis and some foreigners eager to kill Americans.

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Whoever they were, many of them died early Wednesday morning as bombs and missiles fired by American planes, helicopters and armored vehicles obliterated their encampment. Tonight, dozens of bloodstained blankets and mattresses, a charred, flat-bed truck and the scent of corpses were all that was left of the makeshift settlement.

Where the men came from also remained unclear. A senior American official said Thursday that the majority of the fighters were believed to be Baath Party loyalists along with some foreigners. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said American officials feared that a crackdown on Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia after the bombing of a Western compound there could have caused some militants to flee to Iraq and Yemen.

Foreign fighters have entered Iraq in the past. During the war, American officials said said Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of American forces in Iraq, volunteers from Syria and Jordan entered Iraq to join the fight against the Americans.

Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of allied forces in Iraq, said on Thursday that foreign fighters are still arriving in Iraq, but that no country seems to be supporting them.

"I don't think these are state-sponsored," he said at a news conference. "I think they are from different countries."

The size of the camp, situated 50 miles from the Syrian border and 160 miles from Baghdad, and the spirited resistance ? an American Apache helicopter was shot down during the assault ? are signs that an armed opposition to the United States appears to be coalescing in areas dominated by Sunni Muslims.

American officials acknowledge that attacks are up, but say they are not facing an organized, coordinated enemy.

Sunnis, who make up 20 percent of Iraq's population, generally benefited from the rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim himself. His remaining supporters, including former members of the Republican Guard and intelligence services, are increasingly taking up arms, American officials said. Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad have been the scene of attacks that have killed 10 Americans in the last three weeks.

Local residents said they buried 69 men here today, all of whom perished in what local Sunnis are calling "the massacre." Angry men and boys streamed by the hundreds to the remains of the encampment today, collecting the bodies and vowing revenge on Americans.

The residents insisted that the young men, interred by volunteers in neat rows in the local cemetery by dusk, were martyrs.

"The American infidels, they have killed these guys, they were innocent," said Amer al-Arawa, a local shopkeeper. "Me and the other men from the city have to show our courage by killing the Americans."

Just what went on in the camp was difficult to determine, as American forces and local Iraqis had nearly 48 hours to comb through the site. American military officials, citing ongoing operations, refused to comment on any aspect of the camp and issued misleading descriptions of its location. On Thursday, military official said the camp was 160 miles from the capital.

An inspection of the camp tonight turned up no conclusive proof that men were being trained here. But the personal effects of the young men, as well as evidence of weapons, did not support the contention that they were shepherds.

Strewn across the camp were backpacks, military uniforms and American-style shorts and basketball sneakers ? urban clothing that shepherds are unlikely to wear. Large quantities of medical supplies were packed in tote bags.

There was evidence, but not definitive proof, of the presence of foreign fighters: a catalog from a food processing company in Damascus, Syria, food made in Jordan and a pouch of tobacco made in Algeria. But many of those items are slowly becoming available in Iraq.

At the same time, local residents gave contradictory answers to questions about the identities of the men.

They maintained that all were Iraqis, but said they knew nothing about them, not even their names. They said that all of the men had come from outside the town.

Iraq War may have killed 10,000 civilians, researchers say

Unabridged and Unedited article at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,976392,00.html

Iraq War may have killed 10,000 civilians, researchers say
Simon Jeffery
Friday June 13, 2003
The Guardian

At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000.

Iraq Body Count (IBC), http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict. Its latest report compares those figures with 14 other counts, most of them taken in Iraq, which, it says, bear out its findings. John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University and an IBC report author, said the studies in Iraq backed up his group's figures. "The totality is now producing an unassailable sense that there were a hell of a lot of civilian deaths in Iraq."

UK Response A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said he had not seen anything to substantiate the report's figures. "During the conflict we took great pains to minimise casualties among civilians. We targeted [the] military. So it is very difficult for us to give any guidance or credence to a set of figures that suggest there was x number of civilian casualties."

US Response Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a US defence department spokesman, said the Pentagon had not counted civilian deaths because its efforts had been focused on defeating enemy forces rather than aiming at civilians. He said that under international law the US was not liable to pay compensation for "injuries or damage occurring during lawful combat operations". Whether it was "lawful" or based on lies, that still has to be determined. Hopefully the liars will find themselves resigned to a fate worse than that of Dante's Hell.

Juries Reject Death Penalty in Nearly All Federal Trials

Unabridged and Unedited article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/national/15DEAT.html

Juries Reject Death Penalty in Nearly All Federal Trials
By ADAM LIPTAK
June 15, 2003

Federal prosecutors failed to persuade juries to impose the death penalty in 15 of the last 16 trials in which they sought it, says the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which assists lawyers defending federal capital cases.

Legal experts say the trend might have a number of explanations, like overreaching by prosecutors and some jurors' growing unease with the death penalty.

The rate at which juries rejected the death penalty in the federal trials, over about the last year, is sharply higher than in earlier years in the federal system and in current state prosecutions, Justice Department records and lawyers around the country say.

Kevin McNally, a lawyer with the project which collected the information, said the statistics were particularly surprising given the advantages federal prosecutors have in capital cases.

"The most aggravated cases are handpicked by seasoned career federal prosecutors with the most resources," Mr. McNally said, "and they only get one out of 16? If they were a corporation, there would be an investigation."

Monica Goodling, a Justice Department spokeswoman, did not take issue with the statistics and said they arose from a new prosecutorial philosophy under which more capital cases are taken to trial.

"Prior to 2001, federal prosecutors used to plead many of these cases to life," Ms. Goodling said. "But people who commit the same sort of heinous crimes are now treated equally no matter what state they committed the crime in."

She added that, viewed in absolute rather than percentage terms, "the number of death penalties obtained has remained consistent over time."

The current Justice Department has obtained about two death penalties a year, slightly fewer than earlier administrations.

The cases in which prosecutors failed to convince juries to impose the death penalty, all of which resulted in convictions, were in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and the District of Columbia. The case in which they succeeded was in Arizona.

With the exception of the District of Columbia, said Jamie Orenstein, a former Justice Department official who advised Attorney General Janet Reno on death penalty issues, "these are all in jurisdictions that not only allow the death penalty but have historically been among the most receptive to imposing it." Many of the cases involved gruesome crimes, including mass murder and the killings of small children. On Friday, a jury in Binghamton, N.Y., sentenced two defendants to life without parole for torturing and killing a rival drug dealer.

Though Attorney General John Ashcroft has been aggressive in insisting on seeking the death penalty even over the recommendations of local prosecutors, just two of the 15 cases involved such overrides, Mr. McNally said. In one of them, Ms. Reno had authorized the death penalty prosecution.

David Baldus, a law professor at the University of Iowa and an expert in the death penalty, cautioned that a year's worth of federal trials was not a particularly large sample.

"It might just be a statistical artifact," Professor Baldus said. "It might be an anomaly."

In the two and a half years of the Bush administration, the defense counsel project says, 34 federal capital trials were concluded, resulting in 5 death sentences ? about 15 percent of the cases. The comparable numbers from 1988 through 2000, Justice Department statistics show, were 26 death penalties in 57 capital trials, or 46 percent.

Definitive data about the juries' decisions in state capital trials is harder to come by, but legal experts said rates varied from about 25 percent in the Northeast to 85 percent in Texas.

"It is just the opposite of the federal experience," Professor Baldus said, referring to the recent statistics.

Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said recent results showed that federal defense lawyers were better financed and more competent than their state counterparts, particularly at presenting mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of the trial.

"It's almost a controlled experiment on the difference that quality of counsel makes," Professor Zimring said.

Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, attributed some of the trend to the way judges have interpreted the federal death penalty law.

A single juror can deadlock the sentencing phase in federal death penalty trials, resulting in a life sentence. In those circumstances some states allow selection of a new jury to decide the penalty.

Alan Vinegrad, a former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said the recent statistics represented something larger.

"It reflects that the tide is turning in this country with regard to attitudes about the death penalty," Mr. Vinegrad said. "There has been so much publicity about wrongfully convicted defendants on death row that people sitting on juries are reluctant to impose the ultimate sanction."

Mr. Orenstein, the former Justice Department official, said federal prosecutors should be more cautious.

"It's a dangerous game the Department of Justice is playing here," he said, adding that the failed capital prosecutions were a poor use of resources and damaged prosecutors' credibility.

"We've got to assume," he said, "that if some juries are balking at death in overcharged cases, others are balking at conviction."

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, British Intelligence report finds

Unabridged and unedited report at
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/st...6903,977853,00.html

And Mr. Bush was using this as "proof" of WMD's being found. Will the turd never stop falling from his mouth.

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, British Intelligence report finds
Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.

A British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

Again, what is disturbing to me is that the US and UK kept the sanctions on based on these lies. They extended sanctions saying that Saddam lied, but it turns out that they themselves were lying. If it is so, then the blood of the thousands dead during the sanctions is not on Saddams' hands, but the hands of US and UK. And specifically, the butchers are Blair, and Bush. Maybe it was Sharon giving them lessons.

Tales of Despair From Guantánamo - Many tried to commit suicide - uncertainity of future

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/internat...nted=print&position=

Tales of Despair From Guantánamo
By CARLOTTA GALL with NEIL A. LEWIS
June 17, 2003

Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves. In the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 individuals, with most of those attempts made this year, Capt. Warren Neary, a spokesman at the detention camp, said today. None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but one man has suffered severe brain damage, according to his lawyer.

Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the conditions at Guantánamo Bay and the unclear legal status of the detainees. The American military has refused to consider them prisoners of war, even though a majority were captured on the battlefield, and does not allow them access to lawyers. No charges have yet been brought against any of the detainees, some of whom have been there for 18 months.

The prisoners come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50 Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of them captured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Najeef bin Mohamad Ahmed al-Nauimi, a former justice minister in Qatar, who is representing nearly 100 of the detainees. According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, </B> it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, <B>combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment.

One Taliban fighter from the southern province of Helmand, who only uses one name, Rustam, said in May that he was driven to trying to hang himself because he was in a block of Arabs and Uzbeks he described as "crazy." "There were some very strange people, they were hitting their heads on the wall, insulting the soldiers, and that is why I hated it," said Rustam, who is 22, in an interview in an Afghan prison in Kabul. "I think they were really crazy people, and that's why I kept asking to be taken out for questioning."

The men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements. "We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said. Mr. Muhammad, who spent 18 months in Cuba before his release, said that "when they first took us there they would not let us talk, or stand or walk around the cell. "At the beginning it was very hard to bear," he added. "There was no call to prayer, and there was no shade. In the afternoon the sun came in from the side."

The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. "After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long. Under the current routine, a majority of the prisoners remain in their cells but for two 15-minute periods a week, in which they walk around the cage and take a shower. In addition, the call to prayer is played over the prison's loudspeakers five times a day.

Conditions improved after the first few months, and prisoners were moved to newly built cells with running water and a bed, Mr. Shah said.

Back home with time to ponder their ordeal, the former prisoners now want to demand compensation. "The Americans said if anyone is innocent, they will get compensation," Mr. Muhammad said. "They held me for 18 months, and so they should give me compensation. They told me I was innocent, but they did not apologize."

Battlefield Aid for Soldiers' Battered Psyches

Unedited and unabridged article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/21/internat...nted=print&position=

Battlefield Aid for US Soldiers' Battered Psyches - Occupation in Iraq
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
June 16, 2003

 It was only after the fighting stopped that Pvt. Christopher L. Labier began to feel the symptoms, though of what he did not know at the time. He became withdrawn. He lost his energy and his appetite. Worst of all were the images that flashed through his mind. They were not nightmares, since to have nightmares you have to go to sleep. And he could not. "I'd be lying there for hours every night," he said. "I would see scenes. I would hear voices. I kept hearing one of the squad leaders tell my team leader to help him ID the bodies of his guys." Their bodies had been torn apart by a bomb packed inside a taxi. The explosion killed four soldiers from the First Brigade of the Army's Third Infantry Division at a checkpoint north of Najaf on March 29. Had Private Labier's platoon not been relieved a few minutes before, it might have been his body out there, rent beyond recognition.

For anyone involved in it, war is an indelible experience. For Private Labier, it became a debilitating one. The psychological strain he continues to endure has had many names over the years.

• In World War I, it was shell shock.
• In World War II, it was combat fatigue, or, officially, psychoneurosis. But soldiers being soldiers, it was truncated to "psycho."
• Today, it is called combat stress reaction, and in Iraq hundreds of soldiers like Private Labier have suffered at least some of its symptoms, medical officials here said.
  

It does make wonder as to how the innocent and civilian Iraqi's, who were slaughtered by Mr. Bush's "precision bombs" are coping with the horrs. The soldiers enlisted themselves for the war, but the civilians never asked or expected to be part of it.

They have also undergone treatment in what may be the American military's most aggressive effort ever to recognize and address combat stress while its soldiers are still in the field, before its effects deepen, especially when the war's veterans begin to return home.

Each of the major combat units in Iraq included a team of mental health workers. In Private Labier's case, the First Brigade has a soft-spoken social worker, Capt. Ronald J. Whalen, who met with him and referred him to the 113th Medical Company, an Army Reserve unit from California now working out of a Baghdad hospital that had once been the private clinic of Saddam Hussein's most senior aides.

How many soldiers here will ultimately suffer from protracted psychological problems, including, in the worst cases, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, remains to be seen. The prospect certainly worries Private Labier, 24, a gunner with the First Brigade's Second Battalion, Seventh Armored Regiment. For now, though, he has returned to duty with his unit, which remains in Baghdad as a reserve force. He credited the treatment he received for helping him cope, but he acknowledged the difficulties and the fears that he still faced, even as the mission has evolved from waging war to keeping peace.
"I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "Every time you go out the gate, you get nervous, especially when people have been shooting at you for two months."

Col. Robert S. Knapp, a psychiatrist with the 113th Medical Company, said it was not unexpected that soldiers would begin to experience combat stress now, after the worst fighting ended. The searing reactions to combat, the fear, exhaustion, grief and guilt, are often suppressed in the heat of battle, he said, surfacing only when the pace of operations slows.

"They're told to suck it up and drive on," he said. "Sooner or later, they have to work it out."

Colonel Knapp's Reserve company arrived in Baghdad in April. In the last six weeks, it has treated more than 100 soldiers, sometimes only 1 or 2 a day, once as many as 18.

Even though heavy combat has ended, the continued attacks on American soldiers, the difficulties of adjusting to a peacekeeping role and the heat and chaos of Baghdad continue to exact a psychological toll.

Symptoms of combat stress or, in noncombat situations like today's, "operational stress," include anxiety and irritability, agitation and apathy and, in more severe cases, memory loss and psychotic episodes.

Treatment is often as simple as giving soldiers time to rest for a few hours or days, to get a shower and some sleep, to talk about the feelings they have in the presence of a counselor. Only in rare cases ? twice, so far, in the case of 113th Medical Company ? are soldiers evacuated to undergo more serious psychological treatment.

Colonel Knapp said he was reluctant to prescribe familiar stress- and anxiety-reducing medicines like Prozac or Zoloft unless soldiers were taking them before they arrived. "You can't make an accurate diagnosis of stress in a high-stress environment," he said.

Most often, treatment occurs within units, since the most effective treatment is to get soldiers back to duty as quickly as possible.

Captain Whalen, the social worker with the First Brigade, said he did not even consider it treatment at that level. Much of his job, he explained, was to anticipate the potential for stress before its symptoms became acute enough to require more serious counseling.

Many soldiers have anxieties about patrols now. One gunner on an M2 Bradley fighting vehcile was so troubled by what he saw through his gun sight that he became afraid to look through it.

Captain Whalen sets up meetings with soldiers who have endured some sort of crisis. The sessions, which are called "critical event debriefings," are like those given in the civilian world to police officers or firefighters after a shooting or death.

On Saturday, he met with nine soldiers from the Third Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard unit from Florida. The session itself was confidential, but three of the soldiers agreed to talk about it afterward. On June 5, their squad was sent to meet with the owner of the Al-Baraka Bank in eastern Baghdad. Two soldiers ? Specialist Willie T. Harris and Specialist Mark Ballou ? remained outside, sitting on the bank's stoop. A man walked up, drew a handgun from a black plastic bag and shot them both. The bullet that hit Specialist Ballou, the squad's medic, left him gravely wounded. Another bullet hit Specialist Harris in his protective vest. The vest stopped the bullet, but the force of the impact still gouged a hole in his flesh just below his clavicle. He carries the slug in his wallet now. Specialist Harris righted himself, dropped to one knee, raised his rifle and shot the man four times as he tried to run away. The man collapsed on the median of a bustling street, fatally wounded. It troubles him. "I'll probably never be able to get rid of that image," Specialist Harris, 30, a corrections officer in Florida when he is not on active duty. "Everything stopped. Me, Ballou and that guy were the only ones there. It was like slow motion."

Captain Whalen said it was a common response to a traumatic event: the images recurring over and over. Specialist Robert A. Pybus, who treated Specialist Ballou's wound on the scene, said it was "like a newsclip on CNN." "It just plays back in your head, uncontrollably, especially when you have down time," he said. Their squad has resumed patrols, though they said they did so apprehensively. Gunmen have shot at them three more times since then, though no one has been hurt in those instances.

None of them have so far displayed explicit symptoms of combat stress, but they welcomed the chance to discuss it with Captain Whalen, who guided them through a factual recounting of what happened, which often helps create a foundation for coping with the stress. "We hadn't sat down as a squad and just talked about it," said the squad leader, Sgt. Donald K. Tibbets. Private Labier did not talk much about his feelings either, suffering instead from what he described as a private torment. His battalion was involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, as the Third Infantry Division swept through southern Iraq and captured the airport and the center of the city in early April. The most vivid images he recalls include the rocket-propelled grenade that landed but did not explode near his company in a village on the road into Baghdad's airport; the pinging of bullets hitting his Bradley, a sound he likened to that of a ball-peen hammer striking metal; the three Iraqis he knows he killed on the road west of the airport; the carnage of the taxi bombing.

Private Labier said he was having difficulty making the transition from war to peace, from fighting to patrolling Baghdad's streets during a talk on the eighth-floor balcony of Iraq's Interior Ministry, where his battalion now lives. He is bitter that much of the Third Infantry Division has been ordered to stay on during the hot summer months, after having already fought for so long. He distrusts Iraqis. He fears the ever-present orange-and-white taxis, since it was a similar one that exploded at the checkpoint north of Najaf. He said he felt guilt and a simmering rage when he realizes how close he came to being killed. "It could have been you," he said. "It could have been my kids at home without a dad." He began snapping at several of his fellow soldiers. "It got to the point I stayed by myself," he said. "It got to the point I didn't do anything. You might say I was depressed." He is a religious man, raised as a Roman Catholic and now a Pentecostal. His battalion's chaplain recommended that he meet Captain Whalen, and he ended up at the 113th Medical Company. He was given sleeping pills, but quit taking them "because I don't want to run from it." "They were my friends," he said of the four soldiers killed in the taxi bombing. "That's not what they'd want me to do." He sat through six counseling sessions, learning ways to manage what he felt. At the hospital, he washed his clothes and took a shower. Small things, he said, provided comfort. "You know, just putting clean clothes on my clean body," he said.

There are things he never appreciated enough, things that no one who has not been in war can appreciate enough: a glass of water with ice, air-conditioning, clean clothes. He had his last appointment on Friday. He learned that what he was feeling was what experts like Captain Whalen call a normal response to an abnormal condition. "It helped knowing I wasn't the only one feeling that way," Private Labier said. "It helped to know there was a place to go." He grew up in Montgomery, Ala. He is married, with two sons, Kyle, 7, and Kaleb, 3. He relishes the prospect of seeing his wife, Danya, again. "Having your family there, being able to hold your wife, crying if you've got to cry, that'll help out," he said. He has few illusions, though, about what lies ahead: "It's just going to take time."

Boy's Killing Angers Iraqis - Shooting Seen as a Crime - Jun 29, 2003

Story location
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...8.html?nav=hptop_tb

Boy's Killing Angers Iraqis - Shooting Seen as a Crime
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 29, 2003; Page A21

BAGHDAD -- Around 10 p.m. Thursday, Mohammed Kubaisi, 12, was fatally shot in the chest on the roof of his home in Baghdad by a U.S. soldier.

Those are the only facts on which the Kubaisi family and the U.S. military agree.

For the family, it was a wanton killing, the slaying by a trigger-happy soldier of a curious, unarmed boy who was watching troops search for weapons in his neighborhood.

"This is a crime," said Wafaa Kubaisi, Mohammed's mother. "Why would an American with all his technology kill a child?" But they do execute kids and retards in Texas, Don't they.

According to the U.S. military, what the soldier saw was a figure in the darkness carrying an AK-47 automatic rifle and moving across the roof of the house, with exposed U.S. soldiers below. The U.S. forces recovered the weapon when they searched the house after the shooting, according to Maj. Sean Gibson, a military spokesman.

A military investigation is underway, but the results are already moot for many residents of Baghdad. In their mind, the killing was gratuitous. Even some Iraqis who initially welcomed the U.S. occupation see the boy's death as another grievance against U.S. forces.

"I thought the Americans would bring prosperity, but they are punishing us," Mohammed's uncle, Kamel, said to the nodding approval of mourners at the home of the dead boy's grandfather on Saturday evening.

The men sat on the lawn, smoking and speaking quietly. The women, inside the house, periodically burst into tears, their cries rising from behind closed doors.

"The bullet that shot Mohammed will be worth a million bullets," said Mohammed's mother, in a veiled threat of revenge, after she emerged from the home, staggering and supported by family members.

U.S. officials said they did not want to engage in an argument with the family and offered a bare-bones account of the event -- as they do with most incidents involving U.S. forces. I think a part of the Bushies' deviousness is that they haven't declared the war over - just the combat phase is over. So, as technically there is a war, all the civilians and innocents that are slaughtered don't have to be compensated. And that is the same trick being used in Afghanistan. Did the wedding party that sustained 45 plus slaughters get compensated, or the forces have to pay for their mistake - think again.

The family members have offered an emotional account of what they see as U.S. brutality, further poisoning an atmosphere in which U.S. troops are being killed almost daily.

It is the family's story that is now circulating in the al-Jihad neighborhood of west Baghdad and beyond.

There had been several shootings in the neighborhood before U.S. troops arrived, including the killing of one of the Kubaisi's neighbors by thieves, an indication of the lack of security in the city, mourners said. As U.S. troops pushed into the neighborhood, searching homes on a street behind the Kubaisi houses, a frisson of excitement pushed Mohammed to the roof for a bird's-eye view of the action. As a U.S. soldier noticed him, another resident, a 15-year-old boy, warned the soldier that it was a child on the roof. The soldier fired anyway, the family said.

After Mohammed was shot, his sister, Aseel, carried him down to the kitchen and placed him in the arms of his mother. Mohammed's identical twin, Mustafa, knelt beside him. "Talk to me, talk to me," the rail-thin boy pleaded. Maybe it is just me, but this imagery of twins - one alive and one dead - is very powerful and surreal for me.

Family members and neighbors rushed into the house, which was soon filled with wailing and screaming, the family said. U.S. troops also arrived quickly. Mohammed's mother said that a soldier kicked her when he burst into the house and that other troops poured in pointing their guns and further terrorizing the occupants.

In a separate interview, however, Mohammed's father described a U.S. soldier taking Mohammed's pulse and another soldier, who he presumed was the shooter, weeping in the corner.

Mohammed was eventually whisked to the car of a doctor, who pronounced him dead on the way to the hospital. He was buried Friday, and the formal mourning, marked by visits from friends and neighbors, ended Saturday.

"He is in heaven now," said his father. "And he will take his mother and his father by the hand and one day lead them into heaven, too."

Mohammed's father, unlike his mother, said he was not ready to call for revenge, but expressed astonishment that the U.S. military had not apologized for killing his son. "I want to speak to the man who killed my son, and I want to speak to his superior," he said. "That is our tradition. We must speak." Speak to the Occupiers on a mission from the lunatic Donald Rumsfeld ? The Gods must be crazy.

Armed Forces Reaction to Iraq Deployment

Calculating the cost-benefits of military casualties - The Indian version.

Unedited and Unabridged article at
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EG02Df04.html

A history lesson for Delhi - Deploying Forces in Iraq
By Siddharth Srivastava
July 02, 2003

Should India send troops to Iraq?

Those in favor of pitching in with the US, surprisingly, belong in the majority to the armed forces themselves.

The arguments, if somewhat cynical, revolve around higher monetary returns.

• Indian armed forces are exposed to risk in any case - whether in Kashmir or on the Indo-Pak border or tackling insurgency in northeast India. They die unsung deaths, meriting no mention in the media, except for a small single column item in the inside pages, if lucky. What is the point of talking about body bags? They don't matter, life doesn't matter here, unlike in the US.
• The extra wages if deployed in Iraq are good by Indian standards - US$1,000 a month that the US is offering, apart from regular salary and perks. Good money, if one can survive the ordeal. A sniper bullet a day that finds its target is chicken feed for soldiers deployed in Kashmir.
  

A former Indian army general has even argued that there is a learning curve in such wars, as the Indian forces are turning technically obsolescent.

• He goes on to defend the Indian peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka of some years ago that cost more than 2,000 Indian lives, as important learning ground for guerilla warfare.
• Many in this country still talk bitterly about the Sri Lanka fiasco. Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. To some, it was justice delivered.
  

Anger Rises for Families of US Troops in Iraq

Daddy, what did you leave behind for me ... Pink Floyd

Unedited and unabridged story at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/04/national...nted=print&position=

Anger Rises for Families of US Troops in Iraq
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
July 04, 2003

Military families, so often the ones to put a cheery face on war, are growing vocal. Since major combat for the 150,000 troops in Iraq was declared over on May 1, more than 60 Americans, including 25 killed in hostile encounters, have died in Iraq, about half the number of deaths in the two months of the initial campaign. Frustrations became so bad recently at Fort Stewart, Ga., that a colonel, meeting with 800 seething spouses, most of them wives, had to be escorted from the session. "They were crying, cussing, yelling and screaming for their men to come back," said Lucia Braxton, director of community services at Fort Stewart.

"I want my husband home," Ms. Leija, a mother of three children, said. "I am so on edge. When they first left, I thought yeah, this will be bad, but war is what they trained for. But they are not fighting a war. They are not doing what they trained for. They have become police in a place they're not welcome." "The soldiers were supposed to be welcomed by waving crowds. Where did those people go?" said Kim Franklin, whose husband is part of an artillery unit, 3-16 Bravo, also known as the Bulldogs, commanded by Ms. Leija's husband.

More and more people are dreading that knock on the door. But there are other worries, too. War can find the weakest seam of a military marriage and split it open. After the Persian Gulf war, divorce rates at certain Army bases shot up as much as 50 percent, an Army study showed.

"When my husband first deployed, the people at work were so sweet, giving me days off, saying take whatever time I need," recalled Ms. Franklin, who answers telephones at a financial institution near the fort. "But it's not like that today. Now they look at me kind of funny and say: `Why do you need a day off now? Isn't the war over?' "

Edited by author 07-04-2003 05:17 AM
Timeline: US losses in Iraq - Till July 03, 2003 - at BBC

Story location
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools...le_east/3019552.stm

Timeline: US losses in Iraq - as of July 03, 2003
 
US Central Command has reported the deaths of 57 American service personnel in Iraq since 1 May when President Bush declared that major combat was over. Of the dead, at least 19 were killed in combat, typically in ambushes involving rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and sniper attacks.

The following entries are based on day-to-day Central Command news releases and do not cover war-related casualties outside Iraq or the possible deaths of soldiers succumbing to their wounds at a later stage.

3 July: A soldier (1st Armoured Division) dies of gunshot wounds in a 'non-combat' related incident.
2 July: A Marine (1st Expeditionary Force) dies and three are injured while conducting mine clearing operations in Karbala.
2 July: A US soldier dies from wounds received when his convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad the previous day.
28 June: The remains of two soldiers missing since 25th June are recovered 20 miles outside Baghdad.
27 June: One soldier (1st Armoured Division) killed and four injured in a grenade attack in the Thawra area of Baghdad.
26 June: One soldier (1st Marine Expeditionary Force) killed in ambush while investigating a car theft in An Najaf.
26 June: One special forces soldier killed and eight injured in a 'hostile fire' incident in south-west Baghdad.
25 June: One soldier (1st Marine Expeditionary Force) killed and two are injured when their armoured vehicle overturns as they rush to help colleagues under fire.
24 June: Soldier (1st Armoured Division) dies in a "non-combat incident". No details given.
22 June: One soldier (1st Armoured Division) killed and one injured in a grenade attack on a military convoy south of Baghdad, in Khan Azad.
19 June: One soldier (804th Medical Brigade) killed and two injured in an RPG attack on a military ambulance in an area north of Camp Dogwood in the town of Iskandariya.
18 June: One soldier killed (1st Armoured Division) and one wounded in a gun attack at a petrol distribution plant in Baghdad.
17 June: Soldier (First Armoured Division) mortally wounded by sniper in north-west Baghdad.
16 June: Soldier (1st Marine Expeditionary Force) dies of "non-hostile gunshot wound" in An Najaf.
15 June: Soldier mortally wounded in "an apparent non-hostile incident" in the Taji area. No further details given.
13 June: One soldier (V Corps) dies and eight are injured in an armoured vehicle rollover accident 20 kilometres south of Asad Air Base.
13 June: Soldier drowns while swimming in lake near Fallujah.
10 June: One paratrooper (82nd Airborne Division) killed and one injured in RPG attack in south-west Baghdad.
8 June: Soldier shot dead while manning a traffic control point in Qaim.
7 June: One soldier killed and four wounded in RPG and gun attack near Tikrit.
6 June: One soldier killed and two injured in a vehicle accident about 35 kilometres north of Baghdad.
6 June: Navy Seabee (serving with the First Marine Expeditionary Force) killed handling unexploded ordnance in Kut.
5 June: One soldier (101st Airborne Division) killed and five wounded in Fallujah in an RPG attack.
2 June: Soldier (Fourth Infantry Division) mortally wounded in RPG and gun attack near Balad.
30 May: Three soldiers die as result of vehicle accident between Mosul and Tikrit.
29 May: Soldier "killed by hostile fire" while travelling on a main supply route. No further details.
27 May: Two soldiers killed and nine wounded in RPG and gun attack in Fallujah.
26 May: Soldier drowns "after diving into an aqueduct" south of Kirkuk.
26 May: One soldier killed and three injured when their vehicles runs over mine or unexploded ordnance. No further details.
26 May: One soldier killed and two injured in a collision with a tractor.
26 May: One soldier (3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment) killed and one wounded in ambush on their convoy near Hadithah, about 193 km north-west of Baghdad.
25 May: One soldier killed and one injured in an apparent accidental blast at a former Iraqi munitions dump.
21 May: Soldier killed in vehicle accident near Baqubah.
19 May: All four crew members killed when Sea Knight helicopter crashes in the Shat Hilla Canal. One marine drowns while trying to rescue the crew.
19 May: One soldier killed in traffic accident near Safwan.
18 May: One soldier killed and one wounded in traffic accident near Samawa.
18 May: Soldier (Fourth Infantry Division) dies of "non-hostile gunshot wound".
17 May: One soldier killed and three injured while detonating unexploded ordnance in Baghdad.
14 May: One soldier killed and two injured in traffic accident near Irbil.
13 May: One soldier killed in accidental munitions explosion near Hilla.
12 May: Two soldiers killed in accidental munitions explosion.
9 May: Three soldiers killed and one injured in helicopter crash near Samarra.
8 May: Soldier killed by lone gunman in Baghdad.
4 May: Soldier dies in apparent suicide.
3 May: Soldier dies in apparent accidental shooting.
1 May: Soldier killed in traffic accident near Habbaniya.

A Jury deliberating the Death Penalty Up Close - "12 Angry Men"

Story location
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/magazine...nted=print&position=

In the Face of Death A Jury deliberating the Death Penalty Up Close - "12 Angry Men"
By ALEX KOTLOWITZ
July 6, 2003

It 2:40 a.m. on Aug. 26, 1998, along a main drag on the west side of Indianapolis, 18-year-old Jeremy Gross approached a convenience store with a friend. They intended to rob it. At 5-foot-8 and of slender build, Gross was not particularly physically imposing, and he had a distant look about him. He wore his blond hair in a bowl cut and often seemed nervous and fidgety. He knew the store well, since he worked there part time, and he also knew the young man, Christopher Beers, who was the lone clerk that morning. Beers, who was 24, had been raised by his father and had completed one year at Purdue University before running out of money for tuition. He was overweight and, according to his uncle, mild-mannered. He was working to earn money to return to school. An avid reader, he welcomed the graveyard shift; it gave him time with his books.

Gross stood outside the glass doors, behind his accomplice, Joshua Spears. He held a small, black semiautomatic pistol at his side, out of sight. Gross was jumpy, turning his head from side to side to make sure no one was in the parking lot. Beers buzzed them in. Gross took long, hurried strides into the store, raised his right arm and started shooting. It happened so quickly that Beers didn't have a chance to say anything. The first shot hit him in the abdomen. Gross continued to fire. Three shots missed, but a fourth hit Beers in the chest. ''Oh, God, please, no,'' he pleaded. As Beers stumbled into the back office, Gross followed and, to get a better angle, shifted the pistol from his right hand to his left. From close range, Gross shot Beers in the face. With blood now gushing from his eyes, Beers reached out for Gross, as if he were asking for support. Gross pushed him away, and he crumpled to the floor. ''Why, Jeremy, why?'' Beers asked. Gross told him to shut up.

Gross's partner, Spears, had headed for another room to get the surveillance tape, but he couldn't get the eject to function, so he grabbed the VCR. Meanwhile, Gross emptied the cash register and office safe of $650, then ripped the two telephone cords from the wall. This all happened in less than a minute. The two fled by foot, through a neighborhood of mobile homes to their trailer park not more than half a mile away. Along the way, Gross and Spears threw the gun and the VCR over a wire fence into a retaining pond.

After they left, Beers lifted himself off the floor and shuffled out the door to a pay phone, where he again collapsed. He died under a dangling phone, rivulets of blood running from his head.

A passer-by who was a regular customer at the Convenient Food Mart had seen Gross and Spears enter the store. He gave the police a description, and another employee said that the description sounded like that of Gross. Less than seven hours later, Gross confessed to detectives, steering them to the VCR and gun. They found the VCR lying in shallow water, protruding from the mud; divers recovered the gun.

F.B.I. experts salvaged the videotape of the murder, and a few weeks later, after viewing the terror of that night, Scott Newman, then the Marion County prosecutor, told a reporter for The Indianapolis Star, ''There isn't a jury in this world . . . that would not recommend the ultimate penalty in this case, the death penalty.''


On the 24-page jury questionnaire, Elizabeth Stone, who is 60 and works as a nurse, wrote that she ''strongly favored'' the death penalty. ''I looked at it as an eye for an eye,'' she told me when I recently spoke with her. ''Someone who takes someone's life deserves death.'' Another juror, 54-year-old Cheryl Berkowitz (then Cheryl Rader), who works at a drug-treatment center, said during the voir dire that she thought the death penalty was not used often enough. These two, along with nine other women and a man, were chosen to serve on the jury that would decide the case of the State of Indiana v. Jeremy Gross.

Like most juries, this one was composed of a diverse group. There was a manager of a McDonald's, a cook at a child-care center and a machine operator at a foundry. On the questionnaires where it asked, ''Whom do you most admire?'' one wrote ''Ronald Reagan,'' another ''John F. Kennedy,'' another ''Princess Diana'' and still another ''Montel Williams.'' But they all shared one thing in common. Each of them told the court that yes, they could vote to end someone's life. This is a requirement to sit on a capital murder case, and it is, in some measure, what attracted me to Jeremy Gross's case. That, and the fact that in what most likely is the only opportunity they would ever get, these 12 jurors, all of whom swore their allegiance to the death penalty, in the end, balked.

The trial took place in the spring of 2000, two years after the shooting, though I learned about it only recently as I began making inquiries around the country in an effort to understand what would sway 12 jurors who believe in capital punishment to spare a life. Whether someone lives or dies is the ultimate of Solomonic decisions, and 33 of 38 death-penalty states entrust it to a jury rather than to a judge. What happens when 12 people who support the death penalty face it up close?

Over the past few years, detective work and advances in DNA technology have uncovered a frighteningly high number of wrongfully convicted, especially on death row. But there may be another, albeit quieter, revolution taking place, out of view, in jury rooms. The number of death sentences handed down has dropped precipitously, from a modern-day peak of 319 in 1996 to 229 in 2000, and then to 155 in 2001. And a study released just last month reported that in 15 of the last 16 federal capital trials, jurors chose life sentences over death.

There are a number of factors at work here. In early 2000, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, staggered by the number of wrongful convictions in his state, declared a moratorium on executions. It received a good deal of national press and undoubtedly made some prosecutors and jurors more cautious. (Last January, Ryan went beyond a moratorium; he pardoned four inmates and commuted the sentences of the other 167 on Illinois's death row.) Additionally, the murder rate has been in a steady decline, though that has been going on for some time.

There are two factors, however, that more than anything else may help explain the decline in death-penalty sentences. One is the increasing availability of life without parole as an option, which all but three death-penalty states now offer. In polls, three-fourths of Americans say they believe in the death penalty. But when asked whether they'd support capital punishment if life without parole was an option, the number is reduced to half.

The other contributor, perhaps tougher to measure, is a development over the last decade: an increasing number of defense attorneys have become more skilled and resourceful in persuading jurors that the lives of their clients are worth saving.

The proceedings in a capital trial are unlike any other. They are divided into two distinct phases. In the first phase, a jury, as in any other criminal case, decides guilt or innocence. Then, if they've reached a guilty verdict, the trial enters what's called the penalty phase, in which the same jurors hear what is called mitigating evidence -- testimony about the defendant's character, about his childhood, about his past deeds, good and bad. It is, in essence, a plea for mercy, an unapologetic and sometimes mawkish effort to win sympathy for someone who has killed another human being. Because of what's at stake, the Supreme Court has ruled that capital cases must be highly individualized affairs, so it has opened the door to just about anything that will help jurors get to know and understand the defendant.

The notion that a jury in a capital case has to determine not only legal culpability but also moral blameworthiness has always struck me as a remarkable measure of our unresolved attitudes toward capital punishment. ''It's a tremendous moral moment,'' Austin Sarat, a professor of law and political science at Amherst College, says of the penalty phase. ''It's where the rubber meets the road.''

I settled on the State of Indiana v. Jeremy Gross because I'd been looking for a case in which guilt was not in doubt and in which substantial mitigation was presented. I also sought out a case that occurred a few years ago in the hope that the lapse of time might make the jurors more likely to speak about their personal journeys through the trial. In the end, I tracked down nine of the jurors; only one of them declined to speak with me.

These jurors -- each of whom, remember, believed in capital punishment -- looked death in the face and walked away. Newman, the prosecutor at the time of the trial, has suggested that jurors in instances like this get ''weak in the knees.'' Is it that simple?


The murder received a large amount of press locally, including television interviews with Gross shortly after his arrest. Daily coverage of the proceedings was anticipated. A decision was made to sequester the jurors, who were put up at the Indianapolis Athletic Club, an 80-year-old stone structure near the courthouse. They were told to pack enough clothes and books for two weeks. One juror brought an armful of crossword-puzzle books. Another brought a pile of family photographs, planning to make a scrapbook. Still another brought along her Bible as well as a book titled ''Tough Questions, Biblical Answers,'' given to her by her minister shortly before the trial. They could not call family or friends, though they could write letters and receive visitors each Sunday. They were not allowed to visit one another's rooms or watch television. They couldn't venture anywhere -- take a walk, visit the exercise room -- without being accompanied by a bailiff. It was, many of the jurors told me, one of the most difficult aspects of the trial: having to face alone the weightiest decision of their lives.

Courtroom No. 4 is modest in size. The jurors sat along one wall, slightly elevated, in low-back swivel chairs. The witness stand and the spectators' gallery, which seats 50 and was nearly filled every day, mostly with families and friends of the victim and Gross, were within a few feet of the jury box. A number of the jurors complained of feeling cramped. At one point, a couple of them asked if some of Beers's relatives could be moved to another part of the gallery; they could feel the presence of the men in the first row.

Jeffrey Gill, a 38-year-old deputy prosecutor who had never before tried a death-penalty case, gave the opening statement. He laid out the crime and told the jury about the existence of the videotape. It was a presentation marked by its spareness. The facts in the case were chilling and indisputable.

Then Bob Hill, a 47-year-old defense attorney who had previously represented 14 men facing capital punishment, just flat out conceded to the jury that he had no case. Hill, who has a folksy manner, told the jurors that the prosecution ''has plenty of evidence to convict Jeremy Gross. I would be an idiot if I said otherwise.'' But, he went on, ''we have substantial evidence to preserve his life.'' Hill then played for them the videotape of Gross walking into the Convenient Food Mart and shooting Beers three times. It was a gamble, but he knew the tape would be presented at some point and he thought it best if he did it right up front. ''It was the most damning piece of evidence, and we couldn't make it go away,'' he told me recently. ''I made it clear that it was Jeremy who pulled the trigger, and here's the videotape to show that. I told them there's no excuse for what Jeremy did, but I can explain how he gets to that convenience store.''

The jurors watched the video on a large television screen. They were, to a person, horrified, though most found it confusing -- at least at this first viewing, since four camera angles play out simultaneously, and it all happens in a mere 41 seconds. In the tape, Beers, dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts, seems baffled by Gross's single-minded effort to kill him. Some jurors weren't fully able to make sense of the scene until the very end, when Gross walks into the anteroom and shoots Beers in the head. In the final moments, Beers can be seen reaching out to Gross for support. The jurors were riveted. Gross turned his head. ''You're talking about a coldhearted act,'' Hill told the jurors, ''but you're not talking about a cold heart.''

In those early days of the trial, the jurors avoided making eye contact with Gross, who at Hill's instructions was cleanshaven and well dressed in a polo shirt, dress slacks and loafers. It was impossible, though, for the jurors not to take notice of him. Some were struck by how young he looked. Indeed, Gross, who had had a buzz cut in jail, had let his hair grow at Hill's request so he'd look more youthful. Gross had also put on nearly 50 pounds since he'd been arrested, so his face appeared pudgy, softening his already boyish features. Others were struck by his lack of affect. One juror thought he looked so disconnected that it was as if he were on trial for shoplifting. In fact, Gross was so nervous that his legs twitched, and he often sat gripping the defense table, looking into space, which he later told me was the one way he could stop his involuntary leg movements.

The jurors were shaken by the video, and during a 20-minute break sat in the jury room in complete silence. ''It seemed coldblooded and malicious and premeditated,'' recalled one juror. ''I think everyone was just stunned.'' In the guilt phase of the trial, which lasted two days, the jurors saw the videotape once again, this time with the audio, as well as photographs from the crime scene, including the snapshot of a bloody Beers lying by the dangling pay phone. They also heard the prosecution make a convincing argument that Gross planned the robbery and went to the Convenient Food Mart intending to kill Beers. And the prosecution played for the jurors Gross's confession to detectives, in which he told them: ''He knew it was me. . . . I just couldn't stop. My fingers just kept going.''

Hill did little to counter the evidence but instead began to offer snippets of Gross's childhood. He also suggested that Gross had smoked marijuana before the robbery and murder, which might provide reason to not convict him of intentional murder.

Toward the end of the guilt phase, a juror told the judge about an unnerving incident in the jury room. One juror, playing a game of hangman, drew a gallows on the blackboard and what appeared to be an electric chair. Hill considered asking the judge to excuse the juror but in the end chose not to because he had misgivings about the alternates. But, he said: ''That scared me to death. I didn't know if that was a message, or if she was preparing herself for it.''

The deliberations took five and a half hours, longer than anyone had anticipated. One juror, Cheryl Berkowitz, who in the voir dire told the lawyers that she believed the death penalty wasn't imposed often enough, had come to believe that Gross must have been high when he committed the murder and so hadn't been in his right mind. But it went deeper than that. Berkowitz had also come to identify with him. She was a recovering cocaine addict and alcoholic. Berkowitz, a soft-featured woman who often looks as if she has a lot on her mind, spent her nights during the trial reading recovery literature. She knew firsthand what drugs could do to one's mental state. ''There was a time I thought about robbing a convenience store so I could get thrown in jail and get off of drugs,'' she told me. She had even once shot at her husband and missed. More than anything, though, Berkowitz was struck by how young Gross looked. ''That was everything,'' she said. ''It was hard to put the two together, this young kid sitting there -- he looked scared -- and this videotape. I have a son, too. He was 23 at the time. I looked at Jeremy and thought, What the hell happened? Why would you be out robbing someone? He was just a kid to me.''

Eventually, though, Berkowitz conceded that there was no doubt that Gross was guilty of murder while committing an armed robbery. Most of the other jurors at that point shared none of Berkowitz's reservations. They thought Gross deserved to die. Kevin Garrison, a 51-year-old father of two who had just retired from his job as an engineer at the phone company, remembers thinking to himself: ''This is pretty easy. This won't take long. Guilty. And death.'' Garrison, a physically fit, white-haired Reagan Republican, was chosen jury foreman, mostly because of his no-nonsense attitude and even-keeled nature. He told me that at that point in the trial, ''I thought the death penalty was not only appropriate but was paramount.'' Another juror, Carrie Tuterow, said, ''I had made up my mind: for justice to be imposed, he needed to die.''

In fact, many of the jurors figured the trial was over. ''I don't think any of us had a clue there was more coming,'' Garrison told me.


As one lawyer recently put it to me, the penalty phase of a death-penalty trial is where ''the law runs out.'' For prosecutors, it's a fairly straight-ahead process. They try to prove what are called aggravators, acts that make a murder more heinous. The most common -- applicable in Gross's case -- is murder committed intentionally during a felony, most usually a robbery. But aggravators can also include the killing of children, murder that involves torture and the murder of a police officer.

The defense, on the other hand, has latitude to present virtually anything that might reflect on the character of the defendant or the crime. This is where the trial becomes wide open and freewheeling. Mitigation presentations can come across as sentimental affairs, often with complex and heartbreaking family sagas, a cross between a Bob Greene column and a Tolstoy novel.

Jurors are asked to weigh the aggravators against the mitigators and decide which, in the end, tip the scale. ''It's a crap shoot,'' one defense attorney told me. Except here's the telling part: roughly half of all death-penalty juries don't vote for death. And in those cases in which juries do vote for it, it's unclear how often the defense lawyers did a lousy job of telling their clients' stories. It's not to say that even with the most compelling mitigation, jurors won't impose the death penalty, especially in states like Texas where life without parole is not an option. But as one lawyer said to me, without mitigation, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Putting together extensive, sophisticated mitigation is relatively new to most capital-defense attorneys. There was a time, a decade ago, when lawyers would frequently choose not to present any mitigating circumstances out of fear that their clients might be perceived as bad seeds, thus making it easier for the jury to vote for death. Or often defense lawyers put all their time into trying to prove their clients' innocence, collecting nothing about their clients' pasts. It still happens.

But defense lawyers are getting savvier. For one, they're increasingly relying on ''mitigation specialists,'' a burgeoning new profession whose numbers have more than tripled in the past 10 years. They're often trained as social workers and then learn the tools of a private investigator. Their job is not unlike that of a journalist's, the collection and writing of an individual's story. This past February, the American Bar Association added to its guidelines for capital-defense attorneys a section that encouraged them to work closely with mitigation specialists.

In 1990, a group of researchers set out to determine whether the penalty phase was working as it should. In interviews with 1,200 capital jurors over the past 13 years, the Capital Jury Project, which is financed by the National Science Foundation, has found that the most important factor in leading a jury to spare someone's life is lingering doubt (which is one of the few things that can't be addressed in the penalty phase). But jurors made it clear that they were influenced by other factors as well -- if the defendant had been placed in institutions but was never given help; or was under 18; or was abused as a child; or had no prior criminal record. (Preliminary findings from the study also show, somewhat surprisingly, that women are just as likely as men to impose death.)

Some of its findings, though, have been ambiguous or incomplete. Recently, the project has reported that roughly a third of jurors have decided on death before the penalty phase even begins. But they are only now beginning to analyze how quality mitigation affects decisions. The initial research, says Marla Sandys, one of the project's founders, indicates that ''where jurors acknowledge the existence of mitigation, they're more likely to change their mind and they're more likely than not to go for life.'' Ten days ago, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional duty of defense attorneys in capital cases to fully investigate their clients' social histories, because, as the court suggested, to do otherwise would deny a jury the information it needs to decide whether the defendant's life should be preserved.


By the time Bob Hill got Gross's case, he knew it was senseless to spend time trying to gather evidence for an acquittal. So for a year and a half, Hill, along with his co-counsel, Mark Earnest, searched for people who in one manner or another had touched Gross's life. Persuading some of them to testify was tough. This was especially true of Gross's parents, who would essentially have to tell the jury how irresponsible they'd been. It took nearly a dozen visits with Gross's mother before she agreed to lay out her dismal life in court. ''I'm a little bit social worker, a little bit psychologist, a little bit friend and a little bit lawyer,'' Hill said. He might have added storyteller to that list, for in the end that's what makes for the best mitigation: a compelling, believable yarn that, as Hill told me, tries ''to make sense out of the nonsensical.'' It's an art that has little to do with good lawyering. ''You don't engage in the in-your-face kind of lawyering you usually do,'' he said. ''I wanted to get the jury to walk in Jeremy's shoes.''

To assist them, they hired Cheri Hodson-Guevara, who had worked with recovering alcoholics before becoming a mitigation specialist. Over the course of a year, Hodson-Guevara helped the attorneys find witnesses and worked to gain those witnesses' trust. ''You're asking them to tell you things they've never told anyone else before,'' she told me. ''I'm out there to ask the question 'Why?' There's always a 'why.'''

The penalty phase in Gross's trial spanned five days. None of the jurors spoke to me of a single moment of epiphany; rather they described a gradual, cumulative understanding of why Jeremy Gross entered the Convenient Food Mart and murdered Christopher Beers.

Forty-one people testified, including Jeremy's mother. One juror recalls that she never once looked at her son. ''It was almost as if she were talking about a complete stranger,'' another juror told me. But it wasn't only family members who took the stand. The mother of a former girlfriend of Gross's. Friends of Gross's. One of the state's most renowned high-school football coaches. Three psychologists. A former state Supreme Court justice. Three caseworkers for child welfare. And foster parents who had taken Jeremy and his sister in for a year.

Many of the jurors cried during testimony. Many had restless nights. ''It's 4:18 a.m.,'' one juror wrote to her husband. ''Can't sleep anymore.'' One juror recalled that she had one overriding emotion through those days: ''I was scared,'' she said.

Gross's first 18 years were indeed full of misery and suffering. But is that reason to spare someone's life? After all, as the prosecution would point out, not everyone who has a wretched childhood kills. And besides, as the prosecutor Jeffrey Gill pointed out, ''Everybody who commits murder comes with a story.''

This is what the jury heard the first day. By the time Gross was born, his parents, who were quite young, didn't get along. When his father drank, which was often, he would get violent. One of Jeremy's first memories, from age 6, was of his father slamming his mother's head into the refrigerator. Photographs taken at the time were passed out to the jury. One showed her with a welt on her neck and a blackened and bloodied eye. Another displayed the stitched-up gash on top of her scalp. That same year, Gross's father, Jeff, and his mother, Cindy, both exceedingly drunk after a day spent watching the Indianapolis 500 on television and then bar-hopping, got into another dispute. His father smacked his mother across the face, then a short while later fell asleep on the living-room couch. Cindy doused the sofa with charcoal-lighter fluid, lighted a match and then took her daughter, Jennifer, by the hand, lifted her son, Jeremy, into her arms and walked out the door. Gross's father escaped unscathed, but Cindy, in this same courtroom, was found guilty of arson and placed on probation.

She and her husband separated, and she took Jennifer and Jeremy to live with her at a friend's house, where, among the chaos, a prostitute named Angel had sex with men in the living room. Cindy disappeared for days at a time, frequently consuming vast quantities of alcohol and prescription drugs. Dog feces littered the floors. Jeremy occasionally slept in a closet. He had so few clothes that in two photographs Hill showed the jury, he was wearing the same turquoise-colored shirt. The pictures had been taken more than a year apart. Kids at school would taunt him with the moniker ''gross Jeremy,'' and teachers would send home notes complaining of his dress and hygiene.

Bob Hill unveiled two charts. In mitigation circles, they're called ''chaos maps.'' One listed the 27 addresses where Jeremy had lived by the time he was 16; the other, the 33 schools he had attended. When Jeremy was 8 and his sister was 10, the state child-welfare services took them away from Cindy. ''They didn't have a place in this world,'' a friend of Cindy's testified.


Almost all of the jurors were parents, and they couldn't understand how a mother could be so uncaring for her children. One juror, Sandra Logan, tried to avoid looking at Gross for fear she would weep in the courtroom. When she did catch glimpses of him, his head was often buried in his hands, or his head was lowered as he doodled on a legal pad. (He was writing notes to himself like ''be calm'' or ''it's O.K.'')

Jurors began to view what they initially thought was indifference as shame. Logan, whose face is lined with wrinkles from working for 26 years with hot oil as a machine operator, is by her own admission occasionally aloof and gruff, and she didn't interact much with the other jurors. Logan has two sons, one of whom served two years in prison for stealing money from his employer. Looking at Gross, she told me, ''I did think, 'Yeah, that could've been my son.'''

Early on in Jeremy's mother's testimony, when she recounted her efforts to set her husband afire, Logan recognized the address. It was down the street from where she lived. She remembered the fire but hadn't known the details. The house is still boarded up. ''It upset me more than the murder,'' she said. ''I guess because I couldn't understand how a mother or father could do their child the way they had done him. I felt his parents were more to blame than he was.''

A number of the other jurors had begun to feel the same. Cheryl Berkowitz thought of what she had done to her own son who had taken care of her when she was hiding out in her bedroom, sometimes for weeks at a time, using cocaine. ''Having to take care of your drug-addicted mother,'' she said, ''that's a burden no kid should have.'' But what ate at her even more is that she became convinced that Gross's mother knew what he was doing, especially because it became clear that she once threatened to turn her son in to the police if he didn't give her a portion of money he'd stolen. On another occasion, she helped him hide a stolen truck. ''Where's her responsibility in all of this?'' Berkowitz asked herself.

In fact, early in the trial, Hill suggested to the jurors that there should be two other seats at the defense table, inferring that Gross's mother and father were also to blame. Kevin Garrison, the foreman, came to agree. ''They might as well have pulled the trigger,'' he thought. ''They just didn't care.''

Sandra Logan couldn't concentrate at night. She was unable to complete her crossword puzzles. Without anyone to talk to about what she was hearing all day, she occasionally wrote notes to herself before she fell asleep. The first time was after they had found Gross guilty. ''The tug of war in my gut, it's going to stay with me for some time to come,'' she wrote. ''Jeremy is such a young man to have destroyed his life and will haunt me forever. I'm sure the day will come that I will be calling on God's strength to guide me.'' Shortly after Gross's parents testified, she wrote: ''Even life in prison seems awfully harsh for Jeremy. He's been doing a life sentence since he was born.''


The thinking goes in mitigation circles that it's not enough to present someone as psychically battered and frayed, since if a jury feels he's too far gone, what's left to save? As Hill put it to me, he worried they might just say, ''Throw it away; it's broke.'' But when he found Charles and Gail Garner, who for one year had been foster parents to Jeremy and his sister, Hill began to think he had a chance of persuading the jury that ''there's something here worth saving.''

The Garners live on the outskirts of Indianapolis in a modest ranch house. Charles, or Buck, as he's usually called, is a big man, with arms and neck thick as an oak. Gail has layered, shoulder-length brown hair and seems as sturdy as her husband. Buck wore blue jeans and his trademark black cowboy boots when he came to court to testify; Gail wore jeans and tennis shoes. ''We wasn't no big tycoons,'' he told me. When Buck took the stand, he glanced over at Jeremy, whom he hadn't seen in a dozen years. ''I was still trying to imagine that 8-year-old boy I'd last seen,'' he said. ''That little boy wasn't there anymore.'' Buck and Gail, who were both in their late 20's in 1988 and had been married seven years, had tried without success to have kids. So they decided to become foster parents. The first and last children they took in were Jeremy and Jennifer.

Buck and Gail testified that they enrolled Jeremy and Jennifer in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, that they gave them chores every day, that they made a point of sitting down as a family every night for dinner to talk about the day. Jeremy did well at school and played Little League baseball. ''I was very proud of him,'' Buck told the jurors, ''as if he was my own son.''

Buck described how, when their mother was scheduled to come get them for the night, he would dress the children in sweatpants so that if she didn't show -- which was usually the case -- they could fall asleep on the living-room couch. He recounted the time at a Little League game when Jeremy's mother showed up unannounced. She was falling-down drunk, he said, and she berated the children on the opposing team and then mooned an umpire.

Buck got choked up when he talked about how he and Gail had grown so fond of Jeremy and Jennifer that they considered adopting them. But the child-welfare services, determined to reunite the family, chose to place them back with their mother, though only after she could prove to them she had something to cook on. She purchased a hot plate. Hill asked Buck how it made him feel that for Jeremy that was the best year of his life. ''I've been told that by several people,'' Buck said. ''I'm glad to be a part of that young man's life. It was a very good year for me too.''

Buck is an understated man, but several of the jurors came to share what they saw as his anger toward the state welfare workers. (He was also angry at Gross, Buck told me.) A number of the jurors noticed that during the Garners' testimony, Gross, for the first time in the trial, made eye contact with a witness. ''He latched onto those moments when good things were said about him,'' Garrison recalled. The Garners attended the remainder of the trial, something the jurors took note of, especially since Gross's mother didn't appear in the courtroom after giving her testimony. (Hill, it turns out, had asked her not to, since he thought she might have to take the stand again.)

In an effort to show that Gross, with some structure, could do well, Hill had a retired state Supreme Court justice testify to having watched Gross participate in a mock trial when he was a youth in a detention facility. The justice had been impressed by Gross's performance. Also, Gross's sixth-grade teacher testified about how he was so talented and such a hard worker that she'd place him in a corner of the classroom out of reach of the class troublemakers. Indeed, Gross, who liked school, received his high-school diploma on time.

Carrie Tuterow, 32, was the youngest juror. She has wavy red hair and an open face, and at the time of the trial, she worked at a day-care center. Her outgoing spirit and assuredness seems the perfect temperament for such work. After convicting Gross, Tuterow had been certain of the appropriate punishment: death. And then the Garners testified. ''I made my decision when I heard their testimony,'' she told me. ''I remember writing home that I figured out why I was here.''

Tuterow thought about her husband. He'd been taken away from his mother when he was 2 and put up for adoption. Though her husband isn't certain, he has been led to believe that his mother would disappear for days at a time. Tuterow began to wonder what might have come of him had he stayed with his biological mother. ''At the point it became personal,'' she told me. ''I began to identify with Jeremy.'' One night, unable to sleep, she wrote her husband a letter that read: ''Whatever Jim didn't tell you is for the best.'' Jim was her husband's biological father. Having heard the testimony about Gross, she worried that news of his mother would be too difficult for her husband to hear.

Tuterow was so drained by the trial that in the evenings she was unable to paste any of the family photos she'd brought with her into the scrapbooks. ''Last night,'' she wrote in another letter to her husband, ''I had some strange dreams . . . nightmares, really. That makes two nights in a row. A combination of what I hear, imagine and what I read before bed, I guess. . . . I read a little of 'At Home in Mitford.' Now I have nightmares of murders in a small town.''

Her husband sent her a bouquet of spring flowers. ''My husband had a chance,'' Tuterow told me, ''but there was no way Jeremy had a chance.''


As Hill told Jeremy's story, the prosecution pounded away in its cross-examinations at the idea that not everyone who has had a difficult life ends up committing murder. What about his sister, Jennifer Gross? Or his stepbrother, Marion Higgenbotham? Neither had ever committed a crime of any sort.

So Hill had Jennifer and Marion tell their stories. Jennifer, who had been sexually molested by her father and had a child out of wedlock, sought counseling on her own. This is what saved her, she told the jurors. And in Marion's case, Hill brought Richard Dullaghan to testify. Dullaghan is an icon in sports-crazed Indiana. As football coach of Ben Davis High School, he has won five state championships. When Dullaghan, an open-faced, gray-haired man, took the witness stand, Hill asked him about the large ring he was wearing. It's from when he was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame, Dullaghan told him.

Dullaghan spoke not about Gross, whom he'd never met -- Gross's mother had been unable or unwilling to come up with the fees for him to play football -- but rather about Marion, who was the punt snapper on the high-school football team. Marion had testified the previous day that Dullaghan had been a kind of father figure for him, and that that helped keep him out of trouble. ''I always tell my players, I'm your dad away from home,'' Dullaghan told the jurors. The implication, of course, was that Gross's mother had denied him every avenue to a better life, including the opportunity to have a stand-in parent like Coach Dullaghan. On his way out out of the courtroom, Dullaghan affectionately patted Marion on the head, a gesture that some jurors noted as a sharp contrast to the detachment of Gross's parents.

When Gross turned 15, his mother remarried. A year later, her new husband gave her an ultimatum: either Jeremy goes or he goes. Gross moved into a one-bedroom apartment with seven friends. A teenage runaway girl testified that Gross made sure none of the guys in the apartment harmed her. She told the jurors that Gross encouraged her to return home and to go back to school. Another girl recounted how Gross had later given to her the one item that meant anything to him: his high-school diploma. He told her he didn't want anything to happen to it.

Three psychologists testified on Gross's behalf. They suggested he had been crying out for attention, and they pointed to a bungled robbery when he was 15, in which Gross, carrying a gun, took a pair of shoes from a store and fled on foot. In the ensuing chase, Gross shot himself in the leg. He was sent to juvenile detention, where he fared rather well. The psychologists testified to his ability to thrive under structure.

The prosecutors asked of one psychologist: ''Was he compelled to commit those acts?'' At one point, exasperated by the painting of Gross as a victim, one prosecutor suggested that ''it almost sounds as if the criminal-justice system would be cruel to punish a person for committing a criminal act.''

Elizabeth Stone, one of two jurors who marked on their questionnaire that they strongly favored the death penalty (the other was the machine operator, Sandra Logan), had early on been annoyed by Hill. ''I could see how much he was trying to manipulate us,'' she recalled. ''It made me angry.'' Then Gross's story unfolded. ''When you think about the death penalty in the abstract,'' she told me, ''you don't think about individuals.''

Stone and I met at a local restaurant. She seemed wary of revisiting the trial, and in fact it took a couple of phone calls to persuade her to meet with me. She is soft-spoken, with sad eyes and shortly cropped auburn hair. ''It's unsettling to me because it was so violent,'' she told me, looking away. It took me a few minutes to realize she wasn't talking about the murder, but rather about Gross's life.

All but one juror I spoke with referred to Gross by his first name, as if they were speaking of a family member or friend; a few, in fact, couldn't remember the name of the victim. Two arguments ultimately swayed Stone. At one point, Hill talked about studies that indicated that it was more expensive to put someone to death (mostly because of the inevitably lengthy appeals process) than it was to incarcerate them for life. But what most influenced her was something less tangible: she had come to genuinely care for Gross. She told me that it was clear that Gross was moved by some of the testimony, particularly his sister's. He looked to be tearing up, she told me, and she thought to herself that anyone with emotions might be able to be rehabilitated and make something of his life in prison.

uring closing arguments, Hill pulled up a chair in front of the jurors and sat down. He'd once seen an attorney he admired do the same, to help defuse a charged moment. But he also fretted that his emotions would get the best of him.

''I think I'm too nervous to move around,'' he told the jurors. ''The law says that we're supposed to sentence people to death that are the worst of the worst. . . . Jeremy Gross is not the worst of the worst. I think you all sense that in your hearts.'' He periodically pointed to a chart that one psychologist had put together listing all the risk factors in Gross's life and reminded the jurors how Gross, despite the parental neglect, could be nurturing, both to friends whom he urged to stay in school and to other inmates, whom he read to and tutored. ''You kill Jeremy,'' he told the jurors, ''you kill those good things that are existent in his heart, and that's wrong.''

Toward the end of his closing, jurors could hear the desperation in Hill's pleas. One juror said Hill spoke of Gross as if he were a son. ''I'm begging you,'' Hill appealed, ''to spare his life.''

If at this point you're angry that there has been so little about Christopher Beers, the victim, you're not alone. The prosecutors tried, without success, to introduce how much Beers's death had affected those around him. Most states allow some amount of victim impact statements. Some even allow victims' family members to testify about why they think death is the appropriate sentence. But Indiana doesn't permit testimony about the victim. ''You come away feeling that the playing field is tilted,'' Newman, the former prosecutor said. ''The only person who becomes humanized is the defendant. The victim becomes a cipher.''

It particularly frustrated Gill, the young prosecutor, who knew how strongly Beers's family believed that Gross deserved death. ''Mr. Hill has asked you for compassion,'' Gill began. ''The State of Indiana is asking you for justice.'' Gill told the jury in his closing statement that Jeremy had, indeed, graduated from high school, that he had, indeed, advised others on how to live an honorable life. ''Jeremy's childhood is not an excuse for what happened on this videotape,'' he said. ''He can distinguish from right and wrong. He does know how to improve his life. It comes down to the fact that he chose not to.'' Before stepping down, Gill, one last time, played the 41 seconds of videotape. It was his exclamation point. It underscored the brutality of the crime and Gross's unquestionable guilt. A few of the jurors avoided looking at the television. ''I'd seen it enough,'' one of them told me.

As the jury prepared to leave, one spectator muttered, loud enough for some of the jurors to hear, ''He's getting away with murder.''


The jurors were escorted to the jury room, a small, unadorned space, where Garrison, the foreman, let everyone collect themselves. The 12 jurors mulled silently for half an hour, helping themselves to cans of pop and orange juice from one of two small refrigerators. They then convened around an oval-shaped, laminated wood table. Since it could accommodate only eight chairs, four of the jurors had to sit against the wall. One juror could be heard mumbling, ''I don't want to be doing this.'' It's how many of them felt. On a blackboard, Carrie Tuterow wrote down the options: death, life without parole and a determinate sentence. Garrison suggested they first take a vote, and so everyone, anonymously, wrote on a piece of paper where he or she stood.

They were surprised by how similar many of them were in their thinking. Nine voted for life without parole, one for a term of years and two for death. Garrison asked each of them to state his or her case, and it soon became evident who was in the minority. Cheryl Berkowitz, the recovering addict, thought Gross deserved another chance, and so said he should have a chance to get out of prison someday. Berkowitz, though, was fairly reticent during deliberations; she chose not to share her own story, as she feared that the other jurors' anger toward Gross's mother would be transferred to her.

A juror named Darlene Sue (she requested that her last name not be used), who had read the Bible every night searching for answers, believed Gross should die. She told her fellow jurors that over the course of the trial she'd come to believe that the Old Testament's notion of an eye for an eye made sense, and she read a short passage from the Bible she had with her. ''He wasn't so scarred by his childhood that he didn't know right from wrong,'' she told me. ''I remember his friends who he was living with in the trailer, saying that he talked them into staying in school. That told me he knew what he was doing. ''

The other juror who initially voted for death also quoted from the Bible, about not sitting in judgment of others. She soon switched her vote.

Garrison wavered. He agreed with Darlene Sue that clearly Gross had a moral compass, but he felt that the abuse that he endured as a child had shattered it. ''I began to think not that there's an excuse for what happened, but I had an understanding of his torment,'' he said. ''Sympathetic is too strong a word, but I can't think of a better way to describe how I felt. I struggled with whether he knew the difference between right and wrong.'' (Garrison said he repeatedly reminded himself of the gruesomeness of the crime, conjuring the one image that haunted most of them, the photograph of Christopher Beers lying face down by the dangling pay phone.)

At one point, one juror said: ''Everyone knows a Jeremy. Every neighborhood has a Jeremy.'' Sandra Logan, who had kept to herself, talked of how the social-service agencies, the courts and his parents had failed Gross, a sentiment echoed by others. Privately, she considered her relationship with her son who'd been to prison. ''To me, Gross's parents threw him away,'' she said. ''Even to this day, with my son and all the problems he's had, he's still my son.'' It became clear that for some of the jurors, they saw some of Gross's frailties echoed in their own lives. Others were struck by how well Gross seemed to do when he was in detention, when he was in a supervised environment. ''Maybe,'' suggested Tuterow, in prison ''he'd touch someone else's life.''

One juror mentioned the outburst at the end of the trial, that Gross was getting away with murder. She argued that life without parole was, in fact, a pretty severe punishment. In fact, some thought that it was a harsher sentence than death. ''He seemed to be a kid with a conscience,'' Garrison said. ''That killing's going to weigh on him every day.''

The jurors took several breaks, including one to eat pizza for dinner. On the fourth vote, Darlene Sue gave in, though reluctantly. She worried that if a mistrial was declared, another jury might sentence Gross to a term with the chance of parole. The votes were tallied. It was unanimous. ''I said, 'We have a sentence of life,''' Garrison recalled. ''And everybody in the room -- and I mean everybody -- started crying.'' They waited nearly an hour to gather their composure before buzzing for the bailiff.


Many of the jurors told me that when they returned home, family, friends and colleagues at work chastised them for not putting Gross to death. Some of the jurors tried to convey the details of Gross's life, but it sounded like they were making excuses for him and for themselves. One juror would simply tell friends, ''Well, you haven't been where I've been,'' and leave it at that.

One night over dinner, Elizabeth Stone told her sister and brother about Gross's life. ''It didn't seem to impress them at all,'' she said. They said they still believed that Stone should have voted for death. ''We just turned the conversation to other things,'' she told me. They never spoke about the trial again.

One juror sank into a deep depression and missed two months of work. Tuterow talked with her husband about starting a shelter for abandoned and neglected children. For many months after the trial, Garrison told me: ''I found myself going out of my way to listen and watch kids I knew. Just wondering. Hopefully, this isn't the next Jeremy. I guess in the end -- and maybe this is hard to admit -- I had trouble separating the facts of the crime from my sympathy for Jeremy.''

A number of the jurors said they had considered writing Gross, to urge him to tutor and pursue his own education in prison, to take advantage of the chance they'd given him. They exchanged addresses with one another and talked of a reunion, but it never happened. It was, they each told me separately, probably just as well. The memories of the trial are still painful. Even three years later, some of the jurors I spoke with got teary-eyed when recounting some of the testimony.

The trial also had an unexpected effect on Gill, the young prosecutor. ''I was surprised by the feelings of sympathy I had for Jeremy,'' he told me. ''That caught me off guard. You don't learn in law school how to deal with the penalty phase. Nothing prepares you for that.'' I asked Gill whether he thought Gross deserved to die. He reclined in his chair and pondered the question for a minute or two. ''Yes,'' he said. Then he added, ''But I'm not dissatisfied with the jury's decision.''

Twelve jurors -- each of whom was convinced that some people, given the cruelty of their acts, deserve to die -- chose to spare a life. To some, it might seem as if they copped out, that they're hypocritical. To others, their action might appear courageous. What is clear, at least to most of them, is that they no longer feel as certain about the death penalty as they once had.

''It got me thinking that we all have circumstances in our lives that are mitigating, so I don't know how you make that judgment,'' Elizabeth Stone told me over lunch earlier this year. She had initially been reluctant to talk with me, and she was clearly reticent, her voice so soft that it was sometimes difficult to hear her. It was, it turns out, the first time since the dinner with her siblings that she'd spoken with anyone about the trial. She was still wrestling with her decision, she said, and in fact had saved the 42 pages of notes she had taken during the trial, as well as newspaper stories about the case that her sons had clipped for her.

I reminded her at one point that on her questionnaire she indicated that she strongly believed in capital punishment. ''It's a tough issue,'' she said, sounding a tad defensive. ''And until you're put in the hot seat, you don't know how you'll act.''


Alex Kotlowitz is the author of ''There Are No Children Here'' and ''The Other Side of the River.''

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Military Casulties - 1044 injured and 212 dead - July 10, 2003

Unabridged an unedited story at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...0&e=2&u=/ap/us_iraq

Military Casulties - 1044 injured and 212 dead
July 10, 2003

The Pentagon said Wednesday 1,044 American servicemen and women have been wounded in action or injured since the war in Iraq began March 20. Of that total, 382 have been wounded or injured since Bush declared major combat over, according to the Pentagon's figures. Of the 212 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since the war began, 74 died after May 1, not including Thursday's toll.

Iraqi Council to Set Up Tribunals - sounds like the Guantanomo Bay Military Tribunals.

What is the legitimacy of this council ? It is just an extension og the Bush Frontier Justice. It is a sleight of mind similar to the ones that the US occupiers indulge in when they hand over prisoners to their "friendly countries," because US laws forbid torturing of prisoners, but the "friendly country" laws do not. Mission Accomplished. Combat Operations are over. Let's move on. Bring 'em on.

Unedited and unabridged story at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Iraqi Council to Set Up Tribunals - sounde like the Guantanomo Bay Military Tribunals.
By PAUL HAVEN,
Associated Press Writer
July 15, 2003

Iraq's first postwar national political body said on Tuesday it would set up a high commission to run a special court system to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime and others accused of crimes against humanity. If these were real Iraqi's the first person they would haul up would be George Dubya Bush, with Blair and Howard in tow. The rest of the Bushies can wait for their Nuremberg trials. A Human Rights Watch official, however, challenged the plan saying it would put former victims of Saddam and his regime in the position of judging their tormentors and might not result in justice. Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress ? whose leader Ahmad Chalabi is a member of the 25-seat Governing Council, said bringing members of the former regime to justice was among the most pressing issues facing the newly established council. ha ha. It's not funny.

Hania Mufti, London director of Human Rights Watch, said the Iraqi court system was ill-equipped to deal with the task of trying such crimes and said international legal experts should be part of the process. "Saddam's victims should not be overseers of the justice system. It should be independent of both the former regime and its victims," Mufti said.

U.S. Loses Another Soldier in Iraq, Toll Ties 1991 Bush I war

The Bush I war, and the Bush II war are now effectively a tie. Good going son.

Unabaridged and unedited version at
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?...ews&storyID=3097453

U.S. Loses Another Soldier in Iraq, Toll Ties 1991
July 16, 2003

An explosion killed a U.S. soldier in Iraq on Wednesday, bringing the death toll of servicemen killed in combat since the U.S.-led invasion to 147, equaling the total of American fatalities in the 1991 Gulf War. The Bush I and Bush II Wars are now effectively a tie.

A military convoy driving on a highway near Abu Ghraib, 16 miles west of Baghdad, was hit by an explosion that badly damaged a military truck and left two other soldiers wounded, U.S. soldiers on the scene said. "We were driving by in a convoy and we heard a big explosion. As the convoy passed that truck over there blew up," Specialist Jose Colon told Reuters.
"One of the men who was injured was angry so he jumped out of the truck and started firing on those bushes. He is lucky because he almost died the other day as well in another truck explosion." The body of the dead soldier lay on the highway covered with a yellow sheet as the two wounded men received treatment. An officer at the scene said the type of explosion was not clear.

Helicopters hovered above and U.S. soldiers stood guard, pointing their machineguns toward the edge of the road and peering through binoculars for other possible attackers. One soldier put his arm around another and comforted him as he cried while sitting on the barrier that divides the highway. About 40 Iraqis walked out of their neighborhood and watched.

Collatoral Damage - US casulties on lunaville.org website - like Iraqibodycount.com

The website gives the date, the name, the rank, the age, unit, and a brief description of the death.


IRAQ: COALITION CASUALTIES - Summary
http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx


IRAQ: COALITION CASUALTIES - Details
http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Details.aspx

Rumsfeld approved all 50 strikes where more than 30 civilians were also to be killed. - U.S. Air Raids in '02 Prepared for War in Iraq

Unabridged and unedited articles at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/internat...nted=print&position=

U.S. Air Raids in '02 Prepared for War in Iraq - Rumsfeld approved all 50 strikes where more than 30 civilians were also to be killed.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
July 20, 2003

Among the disclosures provided in the internal briefings and in a later interview the General Moseley:

¶Air war commanders were required to obtain the approval of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and all of them were approved. How could we have not noticed the bloodlust in the lunatic Donald Rumsfled's eyes. Maybe it was because his glasses were hiding them.

¶During the war, about 1,800 allied aircraft conducted about 20,000 strikes. Of those, 15,800 were directed against Iraqi ground forces while some 1,400 struck the Iraqi Air Force, air bases or air defenses. About 1,800 airstrikes were directed against the Iraqi government and 800 at suspected hiding places and installations for illicit weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles.

Faces of the Fallen - US Casulties in Iraq - At WashingtonPost With Image and brief Profile

Faces of the Fallen - US Casulties in Iraq - At WashingtonPost With Image and brief Profile

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world...en.htm?nav=hptop_ts

U.S. Commander Confirms Uday and Qusay died in a FireFight

Is this not pure and simple murder? The basis for the war on Iraq was a lie. The sanctions were probably unjustly imposed because the U.K. and U.S. thought they had brilliant "intelligence" about how Iraq was violating sanctions. The war was declared by pied pipers who using the human weaknesses and follies lead the scared and scarred country into war. No law, national or international sanctioned this war. This is murder, pure and simple.

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/internat...nted=print&position=

U.S. Commander Confirms Uday and Qusay died in a FireFight
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
July 22, 2003

The two sons of Saddam Hussein targeted by allied forces, Uday and Qusay, were killed today in an extended firefight with American troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the United States military said. "They died in a fierce gun battle," General Sanchez said of Mr. Hussein's sons. "They resisted the detention and the efforts of the coalition force to go in and apprehend them. And they were killed in the ensuing gun fight." Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of allied ground forces in Iraq, announced the deaths hours after a six-hour confrontation in which American soldiers destroyed a house that the two sons were seen running into. The people inside responded by opening fire on the troops. United States forces retaliated, and the boom of high-powered weaponry shattered the calm of the area for hours, said the Kurdish officials, including one eyewitness. The house was completely shattered by the assault, which included attacks by at least one helicopter gunship. Four bodies were found inside.

The two men were seen exiting a car and racing into a house in the eastern part of the city around 9 a.m. and were videotaped, Kurdish officials said. They said the tape was quickly handed over to the American military, who identified the men and surrounded the house with troops from the 101st Airborne. In Mosul, a retired army general, Ali Jajawi, who lives 100 meters from the house, said that this morning people saw the house's owner, Nawaf Al-Zaydan, and his son Shahlan in American vehicles. It was difficult for people to get close to them, but some managed to ask some questions. People asked him what had happened and Nawaftold them that Uday and Qusay were inside the house. He had gone to bring breakfast for them, he said, and the Americans arrested him. Neighbors found it strange because Nawaf was smoking in the car and appeared totally calm, leading many to believe that he had turned the men in, said Farhan Sharafani, a member of the Kurdish parliament. Both Nawaf and his brother Salah Al-Zaydan, had been prosecuted by the regime under a law promulgated several years ago making it illegal to claim kinship with the president's family. They both claimed they were part of the Albu Nasser tribe and were jailed for it, said Ghazi Ajil Al-Yawar, a member of Iraq's Governing Council from Mosul.

Odai, Qusai Deaths Go Against U.S. Ban - Political Assasination

Unabridged and unedited article at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...p/assassination_ban

Odai, Qusai Deaths Go Against U.S. Ban
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
July 23, 2003

 In theory, pursuing with intent to kill violates a long-standing policy banning political assassination. It was the misfortune of Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, that the Bush administration has not bothered to enforce the prohibition. The ban has been overlooked so often in recent years that some wonder why the administration doesn't simply declare the measure null and void. The ban on assassinations, spelled out in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 and reinforced by Presidents Carter and Reagan, made no distinction between wartime and peacetime. There are no loop holes; no matter how awful the leader, he could not be a U.S. target either directly or by a hired hand.

"There's an executive order that prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders, and that remains in place," a White House spokesman said just as the Iraq hostilities were about to begin. The advantages of using assassination as a political tool seemed less obvious a generation ago than they are today.

Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant

Unabridged and unedited story at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...31?language=printer

Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
August 1, 2003

Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul's executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves. His father raised his rifle and aimed it at his oldest son. "Sabah didn't try to escape," said Abdullah Ali, a village resident. "He knew he was facing his fate."

One shot tore through Kerbul's leg, another his torso, the villagers said. He fell to the ground still breathing, his blood soaking the parched land near the banks of the Tigris River, they said. His father could go no further, and according to some accounts, he collapsed. His other son then fired three times, the villagers said, at least once at his brother's head. Kerbul, a tall, husky 28-year-old, died. "It wasn't an easy thing to kill him," his brother Salah said.


Residents of Thuluya said they had no doubt about Kerbul. After the operation in the village, dubbed Peninsula Strike, a force of 4,000 soldiers rounded up 400 residents and detained them at an air base seven miles north. An informer dressed in desert camouflage with a bag over his head had fingered at least 15 prisoners as they sat under a sweltering sun, their hands bound with plastic. Villagers said they soon recognized his yellow sandals and right thumb, which had been severed above the joint in an accident. "We started yelling and shouting, 'That's Sabah! That's Sabah!' " said Mohammed Abu Dhua, who was held at the base for seven days and whose brother died of a heart attack during the operation. "We asked his father, 'Why is Sabah doing these things?' "

In the raid, three men and a 15-year-old boy were killed, all believed by villagers to have been innocent. Within days, many focused their ire on Kerbul, who had served a year in prison for impersonating a government official and was believed to have worked as an informer after he was released. Young children in the street recited a rhyme about him: "Masked man, your face is the face of the devil." Calls for revenge -- tempered by the fear of tribal bloodletting getting out of hand -- were heard in many conversations.

Kerbul's family said U.S. forces took him to Tikrit, then three weeks later, he went to stay with relatives across the Tigris in the village of Alim. As soon as word of his release spread, his brother Salah and uncle Suleiman went there to bring him back.

"We sent a message to his family," said Ali, a retired colonel whose brother was among those killed during the operation. "You have to kill your son. If you don't kill him, we will act against your family." His father appealed, Ali recalled, saying he needed permission from U.S. forces. "We told him we're not responsible for this," Ali said. "We told him you must kill your son." "It's justice," said Abu Dhua, sitting at his home near a bend in the Tigris. "In my opinion, he deserves worse than death."

Neither U.S. military officials in Thuluya nor Tikrit said they were aware of the killing. The U.S. military says bluntly it does not have the means to safeguard those providing intelligence. "We're not providing any kind of protection at the local level," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

In his simple home of cement and cinder blocks, the father, Salem, nervously thumbed black prayer beads this week as he recalled a warning from village residents earlier this month. He insisted his son was not an informer, but he said his protests meant little to a village seething with anger. He recalled their threat was clear: Either he kill his son, or villagers would resort to tribal justice and kill the rest of his family in retaliation for Kerbul's role in a U.S. military operation in the village in June, in which four people were killed. "I have the heart of a father, and he's my son," Salem said. "Even the prophet Abraham didn't have to kill his son." He dragged on a cigarette. His eyes glimmered with the faint trace of tears. "There was no other choice," he whispered.

The last moments of Saddam's grandson

14-year-old may have fought on after anti-tank rockets killed the adults

Unabridged and unedited story at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...604,1004749,00.html

The last moments of Saddam's grandson
Julian Borger in Washington and Jonathan Steele in Mosul
Thursday July 24, 2003

Saddam Hussein's 14-year-old grandson, Mustafa, may have been the last to die in Tuesday's four-hour siege on a house in Mosul, and kept shooting even after Qusay and Uday Hussein, his father and uncle, had been killed, US military officials said yesterday. According to a detailed account of the assault on the house given by Lt General Ricardo Sanchez in Baghdad, a volley of 10 anti-tank missiles near the end of the siege "wound up killing three of the adults" in the house. But when US troops made their third and final assault on the building, a sole survivor kept firing until he was shot dead. US officials believe that the last defender was a teenage boy, identified as Mustafa Hussein, who was known to be travelling with his father.

According to a military official, the three men took up positions in a bathroom at the front of the building, where they had a line of fire on the streets and on steps leading up to the first floor. The fourth person, thought to be Qusay's son, was kept in a bedroom at the back of the apartment.
"The three in the front were killed by TOW [anti-tank] missiles," the official said. "The fourth at the back was the last, and yes it looks like it could have been the boy."

US Marine dies as end of bloodiest month in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...&cid=1514&ncid=1480

US Marine dies as end of bloodiest month in Iraq
July 27, 2003

A US marine was killed as troops approached the end of their bloodiest month in Iraq since hostilities were declared over. The attack raised the number of dead soldiers to five in 24 hours, making the past week, with 14 deaths, the worst since US troops arrived in Baghdad April 9. The average deaths has creeped up from 1 to 2 now. "At 2:35 am (2235 GMT Saturday), a marine was killed and one wounded during a grenade attack by a bridge" in Al-Haswat, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Baghdad, a military spokesman said.

Greeks - Athens Bar Association - accuse Blair of war crimes in Iraq in International Criminal Court

Athens lawyers' Hague case names PM, Straw and Hoon

Story location
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...604,1007837,00.html

Greeks - Athens Bar Association - accuse Blair of war crimes in Iraq in International Criminal Court
Helena Smith in Athens
The Guardian
July 29, 2003

Tony Blair and other British ministers are accused of crimes against humanity in prosecuting the war against Iraq in a case lodged with the international criminal court by Greek lawyers yesterday.

The Athens Bar Association accuses the government of breaching almost every international treaty and the entire spectrum of human rights in the 47-page complaint. "The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 convention of the Hague as well as the charter of the international criminal court, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," the lawyers said in a statement.

"[The accused] intended to cause severe psychological distress or major physical or psychological damage to individuals who enjoy the protection of the Geneva conventions." The association, which has 20,000 members, said the campaign against Iraq was highlighted by attacks on a non-combative population, non-military targets and defenceless towns, villages, settlements and buildings. The natural environment was also destroyed by air assaults that were disproportionate to the desired military objective, it argued.

The association said it had lodged the suit at the court in the Hague "in correspondence with its institutional role to, amongst other things, safeguard international law".

Should the case go ahead, the association plans to call innumerable international witnesses, including the UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and the European commission president, Romano Prodi.

The ICC was established last year with the express purpose of trying cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

But the tribunal, which some critics have called a kangaroo court, fearing cases of this very kind, can only act when a country is unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute the crimes alleged to have been committed by its citizens.

In addition to Mr Blair, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, and the minister of state for the armed forces, Adam Ingram, are also accused of war crimes.

It is now up to the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to decide whether there is any substance to the suit.

The complaint, which outlines 110 violations of the criminal code, echoes the widespread anti-war sentiment which gripped Greece before the conflict.

Although the Greek Socialist government quietly supported the invasion, providing air space and a military base on Crete for allied spy and war planes, more than 90% of the Greek population were vehemently opposed to it.

Mr Blair was singled out in particular as the focus of their venom.

After lodging the complaint, the association's president, Dimitris Paxinos, reiterated that there were "good grounds" to sue Mr Blair, irrespective of whether his government had "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify the war.

Mr Blair, he said, would have to appear before the court if there was an "indication of guilt" even if, he conceded, it was unlikely that the ICC would summon Mr Blair to testify.

"I don't think that's very likely," he told a local radio station, "but really that does not concern me.

"I see it as my duty to bring the action."

The association, he said, had not brought similar charges against the American president, George Bush, because Washington had still not ratified the treaty which set up the ICC.

Downing Street has repeatedly dismissed the allegation the British government is culpable of war crimes in Iraq.

Upon hearing of the action by the Greek lawyers' group in May, a No 10 spokesman said: "As we have made clear on a number of occasions, the government acted in accordance with international law."

Last night legal experts said that if the court did decide to hear the case it would set a precedent that could "open the floodgates" of similar actions being brought before the tribunal.

US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq

Unabridged and unedited story at
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...ry.jsp?story=432201

US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
10 August 2003

American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions. The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad.

They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy. "We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. It was employed notoriously against both civilian and military targets in the Vietnam war. "Most of the world understands that napalm and incendiaries are a horrible, horrible weapon," said Robert Musil, director of the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility. "It takes up an awful lot of medical resources. It creates horrible wounds." Mr Musil said denial of its use "fits a pattern of deception [by the US administration]".

The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel. Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were "remarkably similar" to napalm but said they caused less environmental damage. Classic Subterfuge in the traditional of the Lunatic Donald Rumsfeld. The revelation that napalm was used in the war against Iraq, while the Pentagon denied it, has outraged opponents of the war. Mr Musil said the Pentagon's effort to draw a distinction between the weapons was outrageous. He said: "It's Orwellian. They do not want the public to know. It's a lie."

1. A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald who witnessed another napalm attack on 21 March on an Iraqi observation post at Safwan Hill, close to the Kuwaiti border, wrote the following day: "Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the observation post was obliterated. 'I pity anyone who is in there,' a Marine sergeant said. 'We told them to surrender.'" At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. "We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on 4 April, 2001," it said.
2. But John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of any other country that uses it." Marines returning from Iraq chose to call the firebombs "napalm".
3. In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Marine Corps Maj-Gen Jim Amos confirmed that napalm was used on several occasions in the war.
   

Amnesty Int'l Opposes Military Tribunals - August 18, 2003

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...4&u=/ap/amnesty_usa

Amnesty Int'l Opposes Military Tribunals
August 18, 2003

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged the United States to call off plans to try terrorist suspects before military tribunals, and to give international observers access to prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The international human rights organization said it was seriously concerned about persistent allegations of ill-treatment and the refusal of U.S. authorities to grant access to independent human rights organizations and lawyers. "Allegations of abuses such as arbitrary arrests, prolonged incommunicado detention, ill-treatment, interrogations without legal counsel and threats of unfair trials by military bodies are raised each year in the U.S. State Department's reports on human rights practices in other countries," Amnesty International said. "Now they are being made against the U.S. government in the context of its 'war on terror.'" "Concern about the interrogations or the possibility of coerced plea bargains is heightened by the USA's ongoing plans to try selected detainees in front of military commissions," Amnesty said. "These executive bodies will allow a lower standard of evidence than would be admissible in the ordinary courts and will have the power to hand down death sentences."

U.S. Army Tank kills a Reuters Television Journalist - Aug 18, 2003 - 17th reporter killed by US Occupiers

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Army Tank kills a Reuters Television Journalist - Aug 18, 2003 - 17th reporter killed by US Occupiers
By TAREK AL-ISSAWI, Associated Press Writer
August 18, 200

The Army acknowledged Monday that it had killed a television journalist after soldiers mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He was the 17th news organization employee to be killed since the war began.

Stephen Jukes, Reuters' global head of news, said, "Mazen was one of Reuters' finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss." Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 41, was videotaping outside the prison hours after the attack when U.S. soldiers shot him. The videotape in Dana's camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and Dana fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a U.S. helicopter. "We saw a tank 50 meters away, I heard six shots and Mazen fell to the ground," Dana's driver Munzer Abbas said. One of the soldiers started shouting at us, but when he knew we were journalists, he softened. One of the soldiers told us they thought Mazen carrying a rocket-propelled grenade." "There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident," Abbas said.

"This is clearly another tragic incident, it is extremely regrettable," Central Command spokesman Sgt. Maj. Lewis Matson said. A U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity that American soldiers saw Dana from a distance and mistook him for an Iraqi guerrilla, so they opened fire. When the soldiers came closer, they realized Dana was a journalist, the official said.

Injustice in Guantánamo

These are Mr. Bush's personal prisoners ...

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/opinion/22FRI2.html?8br

Injustice in Guantánamo
August 22, 2003

As the prisoners in Guantánamo approach their second anniversary in captivity, the Bush administration is finally talking about bringing them to trial. The Bush administration has already denied each of the Guantánamo detainees one basic right guaranteed in the civilian justice system: a speedy trial. Now it appears determined to deny many more.

The delay in holding trials, and releasing the innocent, is unacceptable.

 
• The detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion of involvement in terrorism have been in custody so long it may seem that they have been found guilty of something.
   
• But the detainees, most of them captured in the Afghanistan war, have not had trials, and it is not clear when they will.
   
• Relatives and human rights groups say many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were picked up based on bad intelligence.
  

So are the rules the administration has outlined for conducting their trials. The military tribunal rules also contain restrictions on lawyers that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to mount effective defenses. The Defense Department And this means the Lunatic Donald Rumsfeld should heed the calls of respected voices in the legal community, including that of the American Bar Association, and develop fairer procedures.

 
• The administration has indicated that it intends to start putting the detainees before military tribunals soon. The procedures that have been adopted for these proceedings are unfair. The government reserves the right to deny detainees and their civilian lawyers access to the evidence being used at trial.
   
• The trials themselves may be held in secret, and lawyers can be prevented from speaking publicly about the proceedings.
   
• Secret trials make it impossible for the outside world to determine whether justice is being done.
   
• Finally, the appeals process laid out in the military tribunal rules falls far short of what fairness requires.
  

 The rules authorize the Defense Department to monitor communications between civilian lawyers and clients, and require lawyers to reveal information that they learn from their clients relating to future criminal acts. The American Bar Association, at its annual meeting this month, urged Congress and the executive branch to revise these rules substantially.
 
Before these prosecutions go any further, the administration should overhaul its procedures until it has a system capable of exonerating the innocent, and of showing a skeptical world that those who are convicted are in fact guilty.

Edited by author 08-29-2003 05:22 PM
EMPTY_SPACE

Tony Blair's Iraq Dossier

The Shadow of Prime Minister Blair's Ghost is on the Wall.

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/29/opinion/29FRI2.html

Tony Blair's Iraq Dossier - Regaining the Public's trust will not be easy.
Aug 29, 2003

The secret workings of Tony Blair's government have been on public display this month as a judicial inquiry has gathered testimony on the death, apparently by suicide, of a British weapons scientist, David Kelly. Yesterday, it was Mr. Blair's turn to testify. His defense of almost all aspects of his government's use of intelligence material during the months leading up to the Iraq war was spirited but unconvincing. UNCONVINCING Despite all the protestations of innocence by Mr. Blair and his aides, it is clear that his government embellished the truth in its stark warnings of an imminent Iraqi threat. Just as President Bush's State of the Union address went beyond hard intelligence in its assertions about the supposed Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger, the intelligence dossier the Blair government released last September brazenly overreached in its claims that Iraq could field biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein's giving the order.

In his testimony yesterday, Mr. Blair said the BBC had been wrong in reporting that his government had deliberately "sexed up" the dossier with dubious information, and he defended his top aides' vigorous efforts to refute the BBC charge. Those efforts led to the government's identification of Dr. Kelly as the BBC's probable source. Days later, Dr. Kelly was dead in what appeared to be a suicide. Yet in arguing that his office had intervened only in the packaging of the dossier and had left a senior intelligence adviser, John Scarlett, in charge of all substantive intelligence findings, Mr. Blair claimed an implausibly superfluous role for a leader preparing to take his nation to war. An e-mail note from Mr. Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, reported that the dossier had gone through a "substantial rewrite" to address points Mr. Blair had personally raised. Mr. Powell earlier told the inquiry that in mid-September last year he had warned Mr. Blair that it would be inaccurate to claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Yet one week later, in presenting the dossier to Parliament, Mr. Blair implied just that by saying Mr. Hussein's unconventional weapons programs were "up and running."

The widespread belief in Britain that the government was deliberately misleading about the Iraqi threat explains Mr. Blair's recent downward plunge in the polls. Most Britons now say they no longer trust him to tell the truth. Regaining their trust will not be easy.

For Veterans, an Evocative Repeat - Rising Casualties in Iraq Prompt Memories That Generate Doubts

Story location
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...36482-2003Sep6.html

For Veterans, an Evocative Repeat Rising Casualties in Iraq Prompt Memories That Generate Doubts
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 7, 2003

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- It's all starting to look like a rerun -- a sad, troubling rerun -- from the bar stools in the smoky haze of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4127, "Your Friendly Post," as the sign out front says.

The television images from Iraq tell of a conflict that is not officially a war anymore, but sure feels like one to the men and women who come here for Bar Games Night or to tear through $7 steak dinners. The almost daily reports of another soldier, or two, or three, being killed in Iraq bring back bad memories of the war these veterans fought, the one in Vietnam that eventually was not an official war, either, but felt like one just the same.

"To have more troops killed since the war was over, it's redundant, it's unnecessary," said Steve Farrell, a former Navy man who fought in Danang during the Vietnam War. "Let them start running their own country."

The veterans ordering Budweisers across the bar from Farrell almost all point to a single statement that irked them above all others: They wish President Bush had never said the war was over, especially before Saddam Hussein is captured or killed. But their concerns do not stop there. They worry that U.S. troops have been asked to stay abroad too long, that the United States is ill-prepared to counter guerrilla tactics in Iraq, and that the military will be "bogged down" in Iraq for years to come without help from other nations.

The grumblings are a sign of growing discord from a group that has been strongly supportive of Bush throughout his presidency. Many veterans were gung-ho about the war in the beginning. But their unease about Iraq is coming when many of them are increasingly unhappy with the Bush administration and Congress about attempts to cut proposed spending increases for Veterans Administration health care programs and lengthy backlogs for doctor appointments. Advocacy groups say that more than 140,000 veterans have been forced to wait six months or more for routine doctor visits and that two- year waits for appointments with specialists are not uncommon.

"We strongly believe that Congress and the administration have to do better by veterans," said Dennis M. Cullinan, legislative director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The benefits complaints combined with concerns about the conflict in Iraq are clear cracks in Bush's once solid standing with an important constituency.

"I think this could be Bush's demise," said "Fireman Bill" Marcollier, 56, a Vietnam veteran who describes himself as an independent who leans Republican.

Bush still holds hefty leads in presidential polls, but clearly some Democrats see his administration's handling of veterans affairs and the extended conflict in Iraq as a weakness to be exploited. Presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a Vietnam veteran himself, recently accused the president of neglecting veterans, while nearly all the candidates have attacked the president about the war.

The regulars at the VFW Post in Homestead are making political calculations, too. And the Republicans among them, in particular, don't like the conclusions. Farrell, who calls himself a firm "Irish Republican," wants the president to come up with a graceful exit from Iraq that will quickly stop the flickering images of soldiers being buried.

"You can't fight a living-room war," said Farrell, 52, who speaks in the thick Boston Irish accent of his youth. "Middle America is not going to have that; that's where the Democrats are going to get him."

Soldiers, of course, have always had an uneasy relationship with politicians. The men and women here love to say that "politicians always leave soldiers one more war to fight." President George H.W. Bush stopped short of toppling Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, they say. Now they worry that his son is lurching toward an unsettled end to the current conflict because Hussein is still at large, and routine attacks against U.S. soldiers have left them with the feeling that the region is as dangerous as ever.

Politics was always so distasteful to Andy Burkett, the gravelly voiced redhead who serves as quartermaster of the VFW Post here, that he never even bothered to vote during his 28 years in the Army. It gave him an out during barroom debates.

"I always had the excuse that, 'Somebody else elected that idiot,' " he said.

But Burkett is going to vote next year. Now that he's retired, the time has come, he said, and even though his pals at the bar are grousing about Bush, he's going to go with the incumbent. The calculus of the war is simple, he says: America needs oil and now we have access to Iraqi oil reserves; Hussein was a threat and now he's out of power. The way Burkett sees it, all those complaints about soldiers dying and the length of the war is sissy stuff.

"For every soldier that dies over there, there's $250,000 that just got put back into the economy," he said, referring to the standard military life insurance policy amount. "When you walk in that door, right after basic training, you know what your job is. If you stay because you want the college money, hey, I'm sorry, you took the risk."

Few in the room can dispute Burkett's matter-of-fact assessment of the risks of soldiering. But for most here, there is a good time for dying, a time when it makes sense, and a bad time. Now is one of those bad times, Marcollier said. He feels duped by the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, claims that have not been substantiated since Bush declared victory.

"I think Washington lied to us -- again," he said.

Dennis Nerney, a former Navy fireman, stews about the war while leaning into his engraving tools at a facility run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where he now works. Sometimes they ask him to engrave signs detailing the current terrorism alert levels, the orange, red and yellow symbols of a new, edgier America.

"I hate to hear about those kids dying," Nerney, 55, said. "Sooner or later, this is going to come home to roost. . . . I think Bush's game is running out."

But something else happens on these nights when Nerney and Farrell and all the rest gather to hear the bartender call out numbers for their game of "Shoots," a sort of modified bingo that uses three cards taped together, rather than sheets of numbers. For every grumble about the war, for every off-color joke about politicians, there is someone else talking about patriotism, about love of country.

The posters on the wall say "Support the Troops" and urge the veterans in big, block letters to "REMEMBER" Sept. 11. When Bernardo Figueroa, a tough kid from the Bronx who volunteered to fight in Vietnam "just to see what war was like," walks out to his motorcycle at the end of the evening the breeze tickles an American flag wedged between his handlebars. The little flag is faded and frayed. But Figuero, now 52, never goes riding without it.

September 11, 2003 - Big shootout west of Fallujah, at least three Army vehicles including tank transporter burned

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/254/world/...of_Fallujah_:.shtml

September 11, 2003 - Big shootout west of Fallujah, at least three Army vehicles including tank transporter burned
By Associated Press,
September 11, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A big firefight broke out Thursday about 60 miles west of Baghdad, and witnesses said there were U.S. casualties. The U.S. military said it could not immediately confirm the incident. Witnesses said the firefight started with an attack on an American convoy. But witness accounts of such attacks on American forces are often unreliable, frequently including inflated body counts. Those who claimed to have seen the firefight Thursday gave reports ranging from several dead and wounded to just seven wounded. Kanaan Ali Ibrahim, a witness, said the convoy was moving from Habaniya to Ramadi when Iraqi ''mujahedeen'' ambushed it with rocket-propelled grenades. He said he believed U.S. soldiers were killed and wounded.

Associated Press Television News pictures from Khaldia, 18 miles west of the city of Fallujah, showed a burning tank transport truck, a burning five-ton truck and at least one burning Humvee. An Abrams tank could be seen on the APTN video and there was the sound of a prolonged gunbattle, with the shooting appearing to be coming mainly from the tank and other heavy guns. The Iraqi guerrillas that carry out such ambushes normally carry only Kalashnikov automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The Fallujah region, part of the ''Sunni Triangle,'' has been one of the most dangerous for U.S. soldiers. The triangle is the region north and west of Baghdad where support for ousted dictator Saddam Hussein runs strongest.

A small crowd gathered at the scene of the attack and began shouting jubilantly ''Allahu Akbar,'' or God is great, and ''Oh, Iraq, we sacrifice our lives and blood for you.''

Sharon: Hamas Leaders Marked for Death

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...israel_palestinians

Sharon: Hamas Leaders Marked for Death
By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer
September 01, 2003

Hamas leaders are "marked for death" and won't have a moment's rest, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Sunday, after Israel failed in an attempt to kill the top Hamas echelon with a 550-pound bomb dropped on a Gaza City apartment. In coming days, the Israeli Cabinet will reconsider possible action against Arafat, including sending him into exile, said Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, a strong supporter of the idea. "As long as Arafat is in the region, he won't let any other leader develop," Shalom told Israel Army Radio.

Hamas threatened unprecedented revenge, saying Israel had "opened the gates of hell" with the attack on its revered founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who escaped with a minor injury. Israel's strike against the Hamas leadership Saturday came just hours after Abbas announced his resignation. After being whisked away from Abu Ras' house, Yassin surfaced later Saturday at a Gaza City mosque and threatened revenge. Sharon "has to understand that he will pay the price for all his crimes, and the Israeli people will pay a high price as well," Yassin told thousands of supporters. However, the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, clarified Sunday that it was not threatening Sharon personally. "Each Zionist who occupies our land is a target for us, but we did not select a specific target and we leave this to the judgment of our fighters and their ability to reach targets," the statement said. About 3,000 students from the Islamic University marched in Gaza City on Sunday in support of Yassin, waving pictures of the bearded, quadriplegic leader.

Security officials said Sharon and his military chiefs learned early Saturday that Hamas leaders, including Yassin, his top aide Ismail Hanieh and chief bombmakers Mohammed Deif and Adnan al-Ghoul would meet at the apartment of a Hamas activist, Dr. Marwan Abu Ras, later in the day. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, army chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, Shin Bet director Avi Dichter and Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz rushed to the army's Tel Aviv headquarters to supervise the operation, the officials said. Sharon kept in touch by phone, though he was reportedly busy at the time with preparations for the birthday party of his grandson Rotem. By mid-afternoon Saturday, some 10 top Hamas members were assembled at the home of Abu Ras, a university lecturer, the Israeli officials said. With Sharon giving the final go-ahead, an F-16 fighter plane dropped a laser-guided bomb on the home, damaging the middle floor. The top floor was still under construction, and Yassin and the others apparently were on the ground floor. Sixteen people in the house were hurt, including Yassin.

America's hidden battlefield toll -New figures reveal the true number of GIs wounded in Iraq

Unabridged and unedited varsion at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1041822,00.html

America's hidden battlefield toll - New figures reveal the true number of GIs wounded in Iraq
Jason Burke in London and Paul Harris in New York
September 14, 2003

The true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures obtained by The Observer, which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously. The new figures reveal that 1,178 American soldiers have been wounded in combat operations since the war began on 20 March.

Those requiring urgent operations and amputations are ferried to America's two best military hospitals, the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, near Washington, and the National Naval Medical Centre, Bethesda. The hospitals are busy. Sometimes all 40 of Walter Reed's intensive care beds are full.

U.S. Soldier Kills Baghdad Tiger After Colleague Clawed - As Soliders were having a Beer Party in Occupied Baghdad Zoo

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...u=/nm/iraq_tiger_dc

U.S. Soldier Kills Baghdad Tiger After Colleague Clawed - As Soliders were having a Beer Party in Occupied Baghdad Zoo
September 20, 2003

Adil Salman Mousa told Reuters a group of U.S. soldiers were having a party in the zoo on Thursday night after it had closed. The night watchman said the soldiers had arrived in military vehicles but were casually dressed and were drinking beer.

A U.S. soldier shot dead a rare Bengal tiger at Baghdad zoo after the animal injured another soldier who was trying to feed it through the cage bars, the zoo's manager said on Saturday. "Someone was trying to feed the tigers," he said. "The tiger bit his finger off and clawed his arm. So his colleague took a gun and shot the tiger." The tiger was one of two in the zoo, once the largest in the Middle East but today a decrepit collection of dirty cages and sad-looking animals. At the tiger's cage, now empty, pools of blood showed that the soldier passed through a first cage intended only for keepers and stood next to the inner cage's narrow bars. In April, U.S. soldiers killed four lions that had escaped from the zoo. Hundreds of other animals were stolen or let loose by looters in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of the Iraqi capital.

A Healer of Terror Victims Becomes One - Dr. Applebaum in Jerusalem

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/internat...nted=print&position=

A Healer of Terror Victims Becomes One
By GREG MYRE
September 11, 2003

JERUSALEM, Sept. 10 — In this tormented city, responding to terror attacks has become a grim medical specialty, and Dr. David Applebaum was known as "the first man on the scene."

Dr. Applebaum spent years dashing to bomb sites to treat the wounded, and he was an innovator in emergency medical services that are called into action all too often here.

Dr. Applebaum, 50, was present at the bombing of a cafe on Tuesday night — this time as a victim. He was killed with his daughter Nava, 20, as they ventured several blocks from home for a late night snack and a father-daughter talk on the eve of her wedding.

Instead of giving his daughter away today at a large celebration set for a Jerusalem kibbutz, Dr. Applebaum was buried alongside Nava in an even larger funeral at the stony, hilltop cemetery of Givat Shaul on the western edge of the city.

Hundreds had planned to spend the evening dancing with the Applebaums. Instead, thousands mourned, many with red eyes and weak knees, as they recalled his good works. "He was a great combination of spirituality and humanity," said Aviva Cayam, who knew Dr. Applebaum since he was a 14-year-old growing up in Cleveland. "When people think of him, they use the Hebrew word `tzadik.' That's a very special person who has both a human and a godly touch."

The day of his death, Dr. Applebaum had returned from a New York conference dealing with terror attacks.

Timed to mark the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, the conference was sponsored by the NYU Downtown Hospital and held at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, a short distance from where the twin towers once stood.

On Monday, Dr. Applebaum gave a step-by-step presentation on how major bombings are handled at Shaare Zedek, the hospital where he directed the emergency room.

Shortly afterward, he flew to Jerusalem, joined by relatives coming to Israel for the wedding, family friends said.

Dr. Applebaum, a father of six who lived in a large family compound, "was not a cafe goer," said Dr. Jonathan Halevy, the director general of Shaare Zedek hospital. "If not for the special occasion of the wedding, he would not have been there."

Father and daughter visited Cafe Hillel, on a street lined with restaurants and trendy shops in a neighborhood known as the German Colony.

A Palestinian attacker with a bomb strapped to his back tried to enter a neighboring pizza parlor, but was pushed back by a security guard. He ran a few steps to the cafe and detonated his explosive as he burst past security at the door.

That blast and an earlier suicide bombing on Tuesday at a bus station outside an army base near Tel Aviv killed a total of 15 Israelis and wounded dozens.

After about 100 suicide bombings in the past three years, the Israeli response has become a sadly well-ordered drill. Blasts in Jerusalem reverberate throughout the compact city, sending rescue workers into action before their phones ring.

Dr. Halevy said he needed eight minutes to reach the hospital, but Dr. Applebaum almost always beat him there.

Dr. Halevy was surprised Tuesday night when he arrived and his colleague was not present. When the doctor did not answer his cellphone, Dr. Halevy suspected the worst.

Dr. Applebaum had been affiliated with the Israeli rescue service, Magen David Adom, for 20 years, and longtime colleagues identified the body at the cafe.

Just last month, Dr. Applebaum greeted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, who made a solidarity visit in the wake of a suicide bombing that killed 22 people.

In an interview after that bombing, which killed and wounded many children, Dr. Applebaum said "one of our very important tasks is to unite the children with their parents.

"We know the separation in these incidents causes intense worry and fear," he said.

Nava Applebaum was the third of Dr. Applebaum's six children, who ranged from age 25 to 12. Like most Israeli women, she performed two years of national service after high school, working at a home treating children with cancer.

Dr. Applebaum graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago in 1972 before turning 20. Two years later, he was ordained as a rabbi and also received a master's degree in biological sciences from Northwestern University. He graduated from the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo in 1978, and came to Israel several years later.

Here, he received acclaim for pioneering thrombolysis, a procedure that helps dissolve blood clots in heart attack victims during the first crucial moments, and for founding private clinics credited with reducing the burden on hospital emergency rooms.

In 1984, the doctor reached a man shot in a clothing shop, and began operating on him while the shooting continued, Israeli television reported.

Dr. Larry Hirsch, an emergency room doctor, said Dr. Applebaum made a dynamic first impression back in 1969 when he was a high school student at Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Ill.

"David burst into a room of college students with a burning question to ask our rabbi. After a lengthy debate on the issue, David left and the rabbi laughed and said, `That's Applebaum,' " Dr. Hirsch recalled. "He was always bright, energetic, and learning."

Years later, when the rabbi, Aaron Soloveichik, who was by then using a wheelchair, visited Israel, Dr. Applebaum attended to all his needs.

Dr. Applebaum arrived for work at 6:30 a.m., "but he really didn't keep any hours," said Dr. Halevy. "He always stayed until the last patient has been assessed and treated."

In one instance, the sound of an explosion at 2 a.m. in Jerusalem sent Dr. Applebaum instinctively racing to the hospital, only to be told a car tire had exploded, a common occurrence during the scorching summer.

The only time he was not available to the medical staff was on Wednesday afternoons, when he went to his son's seminary to help him study the Torah, said Nechama Kaufman, a nurse at Shaare Zedek hospital.

One of his many obsessions was cutting waiting time for patients. After taking over the emergency room last year, he set up a computer system that gave the staff instant online information on patients.

While in New York on Monday, he logged on to check in, and then called to gently chide the staff about patients who were not being treated on time, said Ms. Kaufman.

"He commanded respect and authority, but not in a threatening way," she said. "He always had a smile."

US to send fresh troops to Iraq as bombs wound four soldiers
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ap_030928190304&e=1

US to send fresh troops to Iraq as bombs wound four soldiers
September 28, 2003

After long insisting no more US soldiers were required to secure Iraq, the Pentagon said Saturday that 10,000 troops were being mobilized in two national guard brigades for a force rotation and it put 5,000 more on standby as US calls for international troop contributions go unheeded. The United States is trying to persuade other powers -- notably war opponents France, Germany and Russia -- to contribute to a stabilization force in Iraq where US troops come under daily attack

Israelis Refuse to Carry Out Airstrikes

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ael_pilots__protest

Israelis Refuse to Carry Out Airstrikes
By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer
September 25, 2003

A group of reserve air force pilots drew condemnation Thursday for refusing to carry out airstrikes in Palestinian areas, but their unprecedented protest set off an emotional debate on the ethics of the targeted killings of militants. Pilots are held in the highest regard in Israel and their views carry considerable weight, since their skill and audacity are seen as key to the country's survival. However, some warned the protest could spread because of growing unease in the armed forces over military strikes that have failed to stop terror attacks. "Today, in light of pointless military operations ... people are beginning to ask questions," wrote military commentator Alex Fishman in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "And these (the pilots) are the very best people we have. We can ground them, and we can lock them up, but we cannot ignore the questions they ask."

Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh! - Librarians Support P2P in Court
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5082684.html

Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh! - Librarians Support P2P in Court
By Declan McCullagh
September 25, 2003,

In a hotly contested lawsuit before a federal appeals court, two peer-to-peer companies are about to gain a vast army of allies: America's librarians. The five major U.S. library associations are planning to file a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major record labels and Hollywood studios. The development could complicate the Recording Industry Association of America's efforts to portray file-swapping services as rife with spam and illegal pornography.

According to an attorney who has seen the document, the brief argues that Streamcast--distributor of the Morpheus software--and Grokster should not be shut down. It asks the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the April decision by a Los Angeles judge that dismissed much of the entertainment industry's suit against the two peer-to-peer companies. Among the groups signing the brief are the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries Association. The American Civil Liberties Union, in one of the group's first forays into copyright law, has drafted the brief opposing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

A central argument of the brief is that the district court got it right when applying a 1984 Supreme Court decision to the Internet. That decision, Sony v. Universal City, said Sony could continue to manufacture its Betamax VCR because a company "cannot be a contributory (copyright) infringer if, as is true in this case, it has had no direct involvement with any infringing activity." "The amicus brief will make the point that we are not supporting the wrongful sharing of copyrighted materials," ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels wrote in an internal e-mail seen by CNET News.com. An amicus brief is one filed by a third, uninvolved party that comments on a particular matter of law. "Instead, we believe the Supreme Court ruled correctly in the Sony/Betamax case. The court in that case created fair and practical rules which, if overturned, would as a practical matter give the entertainment industry a veto power over the development of innovative products and services."

Student May Wear Bush 'International Terrorist' Shirt

One by one the stolen rights shall be returned.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...p/anti_bush_t_shirt

Student May Wear Bush 'International Terrorist' Shirt
October 01, 2003

DETROIT - A high school student has the right to wear a T-shirt to school with the face of President Bush and the words "International Terrorist" on the front, a federal judge ruled. An assistant principal had ordered Barber in February to conceal the anti-Bush message or go home. Dearborn High said it worried about inflaming passions at the suburban Detroit school, where a majority of students are Arab-American. But, the judge said, "The record does not reveal any basis for (the assistant principal's) fear aside from his belief that the T-shirt conveyed an unpopular political message."

"The court's decision reaffirms the principle that students don't give up their right to express opinions on matters of public importance once they enter school," Kary Moss, executive director of the state ACLU, said in a news release Wednesday. There is no evidence that the T-shirt created any disturbance or disruption," U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Duggan said in the ruling released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which sued the Dearborn school district on behalf of Bretton Barber.

Barber was 16 when he wore the shirt on a day he was scheduled to present a "compare and contrast" essay in English class. Barber had chosen to compare President Bush to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. At the time, Bretton said he wanted to express his anti-war position by wearing the shirt, which he ordered on the Internet.

Attorneys for the school district declined to comment on the case. There was no answer at the district offices Wednesday evening.

Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...5816-2003Oct20.html

Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins
By Dana Milbank
October 21, 2003

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."

President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them politically -- I'm outraged."

Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.

One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.

A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.

Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.

President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.

But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.

"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it very clear it applies to everyone."

Press Underreports Wounded in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...eportswoundediniraq

Press Underreports Wounded in Iraq
Seth Porges
Oct 23, 2003

When newspapers reported this week on poor medical and living conditions for Americans injured in Iraq (news - web sites), it might have come as a shock for some readers. For months, the press has barely mentioned non-fatal casualties or the severity of their wounds.
E&P reported in July that while deaths in combat are often tallied by newspapers, the many non-combat troop deaths in Iraq are virtually ignored. It turns out that newspaper readers have also been shortchanged in getting a sense of the number of troops injured, in and out of battle.

"There could be some inattention to [the number of injured troops]," said Philip Bennett, Washington Post assistant managing editor of the foreign desk. "And obviously if there is, it should be corrected. Soldiers getting wounded is part of the reality of conflict on the ground. I think if you were to find or discover that those figures are being overlooked, that would be something we'd want to correct."

Few newspapers routinely report injuries in Iraq, beyond references to specific incidents. Since the war began in March, 1,927 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, many quite severely. (The tally is current as of Oct. 20.) Of this number, 1,590 were wounded in hostile action, and 337 from other causes. About 20% of the injured in Iraq have suffered severe brain injuries, and as many as 70% "had the potential for resulting in brain injury," according to an Oct. 16 article in The Boston Globe.

Current injury statistics were easily obtained by E&P through U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon (news - web sites), so getting the numbers is no longer a problem. According to Lawrence F. Kaplan, author of an article on injured troops in the Oct. 13 issue of The New Republic, this information has only recently been readily accessible. "Pentagon officials have rebuked public affairs officers who release casualty figures, and, until recently, U.S. Central Command did not regularly publicize the injured tally either," Kaplan wrote.

The difference between "hostile" and other injuries, according to Army spokesman Maj. Steven Stover at the Pentagon, is that "one is gonna get you a Purple Heart, and one's not. One's for wounds inflicted by the enemy. It could be any type of injury inflicted by someone who intends you harm."

A United Press International investigation, published Oct. 20, revealed that many wounded veterans from Iraq, under care at places such as the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia, must wait "weeks and months for proper medical help" and are being kept in living conditions that are "unacceptable for sick and injured soldiers." One officer was quoted as saying, "They're being treated like dogs." The Army has said it is attempting to remedy the situation.

In The New Republic, Kaplan reported on the state of many injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. According to Kaplan, modern medicine and rapid response techniques allow many wounded soldiers to survive injuries that would have killed them in previous wars. Many of these wounded soldiers are left with debilitating injury or loss of limb. Newspapers that only track hostile combat deaths fail to capture the human toll of thousands of troops left injured and crippled, he wrote.

"The near-invisibility of the wounded has several sources," Kaplan wrote. "The media has always treated combat deaths as the most reliable measure of battlefield progress, while for its part the administration has been reluctant to divulge the full number of wounded."

Even now, when the injury information is easily available, many newspapers neglect to report or keep a tally, as an informal survey of some top papers has shown. This comes on the heels of reports Wednesday that attacks on American troops in Iraq had increased in recent weeks from an average of 15 to 20 attacks per day to about 20 to 25 attacks a day, with a peak at about 35 attacks in one day, according to the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

According to an Oct. 3 report by UPI, nearly 4,000 soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for non-combat reasons.

As for the tally of total deaths in Iraq, most of the media continues to only cite those killed in hostile action. On Oct. 20, for example, The New York Times reported: "Since President Bush (news - web sites) declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1, 106 American soldiers have been killed." But this number represents only those killed in combat by hostile fire. A total of 200 American troops have been killed in this time period from all causes, such as vehicle accidents, drowning, and suicides, a figure that is rarely mentioned in the press.

2 CIA Operatives Killed in Afghanistan

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap...fghan-US-Fight.html

2 CIA Operatives Killed in Afghanistan
By BURT HERMAN
October 29, 2003

The CIA said Tuesday that William Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., and Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, of San Diego were ambushed and killed Saturday near the village in Shkin in Paktika province while ``tracking terrorists.'' Both were veterans of military special operations forces, the agency said, who were working for the CIA's Directorate of Operations that conducts clandestine intelligence-gathering and covert operations.

The ambush happened on the same day and in the same area as a six-hour firefight where U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan militia killed 18 fighters. Six Afghan militia were wounded in the fighting, where coalition warplanes and helicopters were called in for airstrikes. The attackers in that Saturday battle belonged to the al-Qaida terror network, U.S. military spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said Wednesday.

Carlson and Mueller are the third and fourth CIA operatives that the agency has acknowledged have been killed in Afghanistan in the line of duty since the Sept. 11 attacks. The first CIA casualty, paramilitary officer Johnny Micheal Spann, was killed Nov. 25, 2001 during an uprising of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners at a fortress where they were being held outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The second, Helge Boes, died Feb. 5, 2003 in a training accident in eastern Afghanistan.

85,000 GIs Told They're Heading to Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...=/ap/us_iraq_troops

85,000 GIs Told They're Heading to Iraq
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
 Nov 06, 2003

The Pentagon (news - web sites) announced plans Thursday to send 85,000 Army and Marine combat forces to Iraq (news - web sites) early next year to relieve troops completing one-year tours ? a rotation that when combined with another switchout of troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) will be the Army's largest sequence of troop movements since World War II.

In addition, 43,000 National Guard and Reserve support troops have been alerted that they may be sent as well.

The moves are part of a rotation plan that assumes Iraqis will be capable of contributing enough to the battle against the anti-occupation insurgency that the number of American troops in Iraq can be reduced from 131,600 today to 105,000 by May, senior officials said.

In an added twist, the Army announced that soldiers in every unit designated for deployment to Iraq next year ? whether active-duty or reserve ? will be prohibited from leaving the service during a period beginning 90 days before they go to 90 days after they return.

That measure, known in the military as "stop-loss," does not apply to the Marine Corps, which said it will dispatch about 20,000 Marines to replace the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in western Iraq, including the Fallujah area where anti-occupation violence has been strongest.

Lt. Gen. Jan C. Huly, deputy commandant of the Marine Corps for plans and operations, told a news conference that the Marines would spend seven months in Iraq, then be replaced by another 20,000-Marine contingent for seven months. They will come from the 1st Marine Division, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., which helped spearhead the invasion of Iraq last spring.

The Army will send the equivalent of three combat divisions to replace the four there now.

The rotation, combined with a switchout of troops in Afghanistan ? the 25th Infantry Division replacing the 10th Mountain Division in April ? is the largest sequence of troop movements for the Army since World War II, Lt. Gen. Richard Cody said in an interview. He is the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations.

The 1st Infantry Division will go from Germany, the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, a brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis, Wash., and a brigade from the 25th Infantry Division. National Guard infantry brigades will be attached to both the 1st Infantry and 1st Cavalry.

Those units will replace the 82nd Airborne, the 1st Armored Division, the 4th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division. First to depart Iraq will be the 101st Airborne, which is the only one of the four divisions there now that participated in the drive to Baghdad last spring.

The net result: 20 percent fewer U.S. troops will be in Iraq by May. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the news conference he is assuming the two multinational divisions in Iraq now ? led by Britain and Poland and totaling about 24,000 troops ? will remain through next year.

The Pentagon had been counting on a third multinational division, possibly led by Turkey, but that has not materialized.

The Bush administration has set no timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq. President Bush (news - web sites) delivered a message to the troops on Thursday via the American Forces Radio and Television Service.

"Our mission in Iraq goes on and the war on terror is far from finished," he said, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. "The road ahead is difficult and dangerous, but I have complete confidence in you. And I know that America and our friends will prevail."

Some of the troops rotating into Iraq will be returning for their second tour of duty there ? and some only a short time after they were sent home, Rumsfeld said.

Reservists will be called up for a maximum of 18 months, with a year in Iraq, Rumsfeld said.

"While there will be imperfections along the way, the services made every effort to make sure the Guard and Reserve forces are treated respectfully," Rumsfeld said.

The net reduction in U.S. force levels contrasts with calls from some in Congress for increased troop strength. The Bush administration says it can improve security and stability in Iraq with fewer U.S. forces because it is rapidly increasing the number of Iraqis trained for security missions.

Instead of relying almost exclusively on the Army to provide reserve forces for support, the Pentagon intends to mobilize hundreds of specialists from the reserve components of the Air Force and Navy, too.

The Pentagon has struggled to set the troop rotation for 2004 because of the Bush administration's inability so far to persuade its international partners to contribute significant troops. Turkey had offered to send thousands but has balked in the face of Iraqi political opposition.

Disputes over secret cases beg for Supreme Court help

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...m_usatoday/11944522

Disputes over secret cases beg for Supreme Court help
November 10, 2003

You could call it the Supreme Court case that isn't there.

So much secrecy has cloaked M.K.B. vs. Warden that its existence came to light only because an appeals court clerk mistakenly put the case on a public docket briefly before again sealing the record. A few sketchy facts also have surfaced in a request that the Supreme Court hear the case.

According to those disclosures, an Algerian waiter accused of having personal contact with some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers wants the Supreme Court to decide whether federal judges erred by allowing information about his arrest and prosecution to be kept secret. The court now is weighing whether to take up the case.

By choosing to hear it, the Supreme Court could provide important guidance that extends beyond deciding whether Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel's legal rights were violated. The court could help a post-9/11 nation find the proper balance between two competing needs: The need for secret law enforcement to protect national security vs. the constitutional guarantee of an open judicial system to ensure the government doesn't trample individuals' rights. As the government and civil liberties groups debate where to place the fulcrum, the court is the best forum to settle the argument.

Since 9/11, several federal courts have bowed to Justice Department (news - web sites) demands for secrecy, which the government says is needed in a battle against al-Qaeda's global network of terrorists. Law enforcement authorities say even innocuous information about defendants could tip off terrorists and deter detainees from cooperating.

Even so, the secrecy shrouding Bellahouel is extraordinary. A public listing of cases at a federal courthouse in Atlanta has been scrubbed to erase the fact the case exists. Much of a legal brief filed by his lawyersin the Supreme Court is off-limits to the public.

The Daily Business Review in Miami obtained the few known details when the case inadvertently was made public. According to the publication, Bellahouel was picked up in Florida on Oct. 15, 2001, by federal authorities, who said the waiter "likely" served two of the 9/11 hijackers at a restaurant where he worked. Bellahouel also was identified entering a movie theater with a third hijacker. He was held until March 2002 and then freed on $10,000 bond. Charged only with violating immigration laws, he is seeking to have his case made public.

In the past, courts sealed information in specific cases when the government had compelling reasons, such as fears that investigations or intelligence sources might be jeopardized. But since 9/11, some courts have ordered blanket secrecy without asking the government to justify the need.

As a result, several thorny secrecy questions raised by the Bellahouel case and other post-9/11 cases require answers best addressed by the Supreme Court.

Among the most pressing:

? What level of threat justifies the government arresting and holding someone secretly? Bellahouel has been released on bond, suggesting he is not a terrorist threat. The rationale for his extraordinary legal treatment remains cloaked in secrecy.

? Is there ever a reason to wipe all evidence of a case from the public record, including its very existence? Bellahouel's case would still be a secret had it not been for the court clerk's error.

? If sealing court records is justified, can the secrecy be permanent or subject to limits? Today, authorities continue to conceal the names of hundreds of individuals arrested after 9/11, most of whom have been released.They say making these names public could harm national security. Several civil liberties groups and newspapers are challenging the claim and have asked the Supreme Court to force a release of the names.

Defenders of secrecy argue that the government needs wide latitude to hold people secretly and conceal information to combat a shadowy network of terrorists. But in the absence of Supreme Court guidance, lower courts have differed in deciding when secret legal proceedings are warranted.

Consider a case shortly after 9/11: An immigration judge allowed hundreds of people to be prosecuted in secret deportation hearings. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia agreed with the secrecy order. But an appeals court in Cincinnati ruled that deportation hearings in its jurisdiction had to be open unless the government defended the need for secrecy. One hearing was later held publicly. Last May, the Supreme Court declined to review the Philadelphia ruling.

Certainly, law enforcement needs leeway in its unprecedented war against terror. But the unique nature of the battle also has put the government in uncharted legal territory.

Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Justice Department to defend the secrecy that surrounds Bellahouel's case. After it hears the government's explanation, the justices will decide whether to get involved. By doing so, the court could set some crucial markers for civil liberties that the nation is still seeking more than two years after 9/11.

Families of Iraq war dead condemn Bush visit to UK

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=461995

Families of Iraq war dead condemn Bush visit to UK
By Severin Carrell
November 09, 2003

George Bush's official visit to Britain next week has been condemned as insensitive and ill-timed by some families of British troops killed in Iraq.

The relatives claimed that the continuing deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq meant the President's state visit - the first by a US leader since the Coronation in 1953 - was inappropriate.

Reg Keys, whose son, Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, was one of the six Royal Military Police killed by a mob near Basra in June, said he had developed "a quite passionate hatred" of the US leader.

"I can't stand the man," said Mr Keys, 51, of Llanuwchllyn, north Wales. "He has a nerve coming over to this country after all the misery he's caused. I just can't understand why Bush was so keen to go to war against Iraq - it's almost as if he was hell bent on making a name for himself."

His criticisms - which follow angry criticism of Tony Blair's conduct over Iraq by the families of eight British war dead - were supported by the mother of one of the first Britons killed in the war, L/Cpl Shaun Brierley.

Christine Brierley, from Batley, West Yorkshire, said: "I think it's disgusting the way Bush is carrying on. It's a war that should never have been fought: then dragging England into it when it wasn't our war anyway. I just wish all the troops were back home - Americans and English. At the end of the day, what's going to be resolved?"

Next week President Bush and his wife Laura will stay at Buckingham Palace and be guests of honour at a state banquet. Anti-war groups plan protests in London, which have contributed to a decision by Downing Street to cancel plans for the President to address both Houses of Parliament.

The Metropolitan police has said it will ban the Stop the War Coalition from passing Downing Street and Parliament during its main march on Thursday 20 November - an event expected to attract about 60,000 people - even though Parliament is not expected to be sitting.

Several relatives linked the visit to today's Remembrance Sunday services, where Britain's 53 war dead will be particularly commemorated. Lianne Seymour, whose husband Ian, a commando, was one of the first Britons killed, said: "Being invited here for a state visit isn't appropriate now. It really isn't a time to be showing off with glorious tributes, considering the political dimension. For me, and for many other people, this war isn't over. People are still losing their lives, be it Iraqi, British or American."

Gordon Evans, whose son Lance Bombardier Llywelyn Evans was killed in the same helicopter crash as Mrs Seymour's husband, said he wanted Mr Bush to meet British relatives face to face, to explain why he went to war.

"He's the puppet-master, isn't he? If he says do something, Tony Blair jumps. I'm angry with the Prime Minister, because he conned the nation into going to war in the first place."

Will the Military help Relelect Bush - or withdraw its support ?

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...nm/iraq_usa_bush_dc

Will the Military help Relelect Bush - or withdraw its support ?
By Randall Mikkelsen
August 24, 2003

Another risk for Bush is losing the political support of U.S. troops. The absentee votes in Florida of U.S. troops serving overseas were considered a key factor in Bush's razor-thin victory in the state that gave him the election.

But with discontent rising over conditions for soldiers in Iraq and extended deployments, he may not be able to count on a repeat of that support, some soldiers and military family members have said.

Bush to speak on Iraq; Rumsfeld admits US failed over Saddam's forces

Unabridged and unedited version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...&cid=1521&ncid=1480

Rumsfeld admits US failed over Saddam's forces
September 07, 2003

US President George W. Bush was preparing a major address on his Iraq policy after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted the US may have dropped the ball in failing to annihilate Saddam Hussein's forces. Rumsfeld, wrapping up a three-day inspection of Iraq on Saturday, insisted the Iraqi people take more responsibility for security in the US-occupied country. Sanchez acknowledged that his forces had faced some 15 attacks a day over the past five days, but said that in half of those the assailants used mortars or remotely detonated bombs and never came close enough to be engaged. Two surface-to-air missiles were fired at a US military C-141 transport plane Saturday as it was taking off from Baghdad airport, hours before Rumsfeld's departure, but missed, a senior US defense official said. "This morning two SAMs were fired at a C-141 taking off from Baghdad airport," he said. "They detonated before they ever reached the plane."

The New York Times meanwhile reported that US-led forces in Iraq do not have the strength to heavily guard all 2,700 identified ammunition dumps in Iraq. US officials say explosives used in last month's attacks on the United Nations headquarters and the Jordanian embassy came from old Iraqi military stocks.

As the cost of American financing Iraq's reconstruction continues to mount and as its troop numbers continue to remain stretched, Bush has instructed Secretary of State Colin Powell to support a UN Security Council resolution that would pave the way for a greater UN role in Iraq.

Survey Finds Millions of New U.S. Drug Abusers

Unedited and unabridged version at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._nm/health_drugs_dc

Iraqis Warned Attacks on U.S. Must Stop

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...q&cid=540&ncid=1480

Iraqis Warned Attacks on U.S. Must Stop
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
November 11, 2003

America's top general in the Middle East has warned community leaders the U.S. military will use stern measures unless they curb attacks against coalition forces, an Iraqi who attended the meeting said Monday.

On Tuesday, an explosion in the southern city of Basra destroyed two cars on a road frequently used by British troops. Soldiers immediately blocked off access to the site, but Iraqi police said four civilians were killed and three injured in the blast.

Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, delivered the warning to tribal sheiks and mayors in the "Sunni Triangle" city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, according to Fallujah Mayor Taha Bedawi. "We have the capabilities and equipment," Bedawi quoted the general as saying at Saturday's meeting. The warning was another sign of a "get tough" campaign against insurgents, who have accelerated attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in recent weeks. U.S. forces had eased off on raids during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late October.

Hours after Abizaid's warning, U.S. jets dropped three 500-pound bombs in the Fallujah area after three paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were wounded in an ambush. There was no report of casualties from the bombing.

• "Neither America, nor the father of America, scares us," said one resident, Najih Latif Abbas. "Iraqi men are striking at Americans and they retaliate by terrifying our children."
• Fakhri Fayadh, a 60-year-old farmer, said reprisal attacks "will only increase our spite and hatred of them. If they think that they will scare us, they are wrong. Day after day, Americans will be harmed and attacks against them will increase."
• The U.S. military said insurgents struck again late Sunday, firing a rocket-propelled grenade at a military police convoy near Iskandariya, 40 miles south of Baghdad, and killing a soldier from the 18th Military Police Brigade. The soldier was the 37th American service member to die in Iraq (news - web sites) this month and the 151st killed in action since President Bush (news - web sites) declared an end to major combat May 1.
   

U.S. officials have blamed supporters of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and foreign fighters for the violence. However, a U.S. officer in Saddam's hometown, Tikrit, said Monday there were no signs foreign radicals have gained a foothold there. Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander with the 4th Infantry Division, said gunmen killed or captured during recent attacks against coalition forces were Saddam loyalists and "we have yet to kill or capture a foreign fighter in Tikrit."

Tensions between U.S. forces and Iraqis in the Shiite Muslim enclave, Sadr City, rose Monday after the head of the U.S.-appointed municipal council, Muhanad al-Kaadi, was shot and killed by an American soldier guarding municipal headquarters.

The U.S. military said the shooting occurred Sunday when al-Kaadi got into an argument with a soldier guarding the council headquarters. The statement blamed the altercation on "his refusal to follow instructions of the onsite security officer who was enforcing" regulations "in accordance with the rules of engagement." An American medic administered first aid and rushed him to a military clinic where he was pronounced dead, a U.S. statement said. Al-Kaadi, who spoke fluent English, had been trying to improve relations between the Americans and residents of the impoverished community.

In Mosul, an oil official was wounded and his son killed when assailants opened fire at their car in the northern city Monday, his family said. Mohammed Ahmed Zibari, the Northern Oil Company's distribution manager, was headed to work when gunmen riddled his car, his brother Nawzat Zibari said. The brother speculated that Zibari was killed by "terrorists" because they believed he was cooperating with the Americans.

Campaigning in Wartime - Bush Attending Fund Raisers but Avoiding Funerals

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/opinion/23SUN1.html?8br

Campaigning in Wartime - Bush Attending Fund Raisers but Avoiding Funerals
November 23, 2003

According to Public Citizen, which keeps exhaustive statistics on the topic, George Bush has attended 35 campaign fund-raisers since June 17 and is expected to attend at least 7 more by the end of the year. Vice President Dick Cheney has attended 31. That averages about three a week for the two men, most of them much farther away from the White House than Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of the dead soldiers arrive back home.

We respectfully suggest that Mr. Bush change his priorities. If he wants to run for re-election as the leader in a time of war, he needs to behave like a president, not a politician. The public needs some reassurance that he is willing to sacrifice something himself to win the struggle to which he has committed us.

"See, if you change their heart, then they change their behavior. I know!" Bush said

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...wh/bush_insults&e=4

"See, if you change their heart, then they change their behavior. I know!" Bush said
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
November 10, 2003

The last time Bush ran for president, his campaign aides were touchy about his onetime drinking problem that ended when he was 40; They denied that he was an alcoholic.

But Monday, Bush raised the subject, out of the blue, for the second time in two weeks.

On Oct. 29, Bush told a church congregation in Dallas that "The best way to help the addict ... is to change their heart."

"See, if you change their heart, then they change their behavior. I know!" Bush said, thrusting a finger into the air.

War critics astonished as US hawk - Prince of Darkness Perle - admits Iraq invasion was illegal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html

War critics astonished as US hawk - Prince of Darkness Perle - admits Iraq invasion was illegal
Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger
November 20, 2003

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.

"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."

Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat.

Baghdad Family Made Homeless by U.S. Missile Still Can't Rebuild

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...11?language=printer

Baghdad Family Made Homeless by U.S. Missile Still Can't Rebuild
By Anthony Shadid
November 12, 2003

BAGHDAD -- Down the street from the trickle of sewage, past a shabby market where three U.S. Army Humvees patrolled through crowds, Madhlum Jassam clambered hesitantly over rubble left by a U.S. bombing in March. To no one in particular, he whispered a phrase. "God forbid," he said over and over. "God forbid."

"This is the refrigerator," he muttered, pointing to a crumpled carcass tossed in the debris that he called home. "These are my daughters' clothes," he said, gesturing toward a dusty brown sweater that was no longer familiar. He stopped, taking a deep breath, and surveyed the life he once had. "What can I do?" he asked, shaking his head. "Yell? Beat my chest?"

Jassam's new life began on March 31, when his home was destroyed by a U.S. missile strike nine days before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein fell. In the seven months since, like the country still shadowed by that collapse, he has tried to rebuild.

In vain, he sought compensation from U.S. officials administering the occupation -- seeking $5,000, recognizing he would settle for less. In desperation, he considered asking for charity from neighborhood mosques. And in resignation, he -- like his country, perched as it is between war and peace -- waits with frayed patience for answers to uncertainties.

"How's it going to end? I'm still waiting for my fate. I'm waiting for my destiny," he said. "Only God knows."

There's a saying in Iraq, often quoted by the elderly to describe misfortune. It tells of a married woman courted by a man named Ali. She divorces her husband, only to have Ali die. "She didn't keep her husband," it goes, "nor did she get Mr. Ali."

Like many in his country, Jassam is haunted by the proverb, and his story is a tale of today's Iraq. The country has endured a revolution whose reward is often lost on its people. Despite promises of prosperity and security, the U.S. occupation and reconstruction have yet to restore even the certainties of the past, shattered by the brief but violent war. In the shards left behind is a sense of helplessness. Jassam lost his home, then, in the void that has lingered, he surrendered hope.

He gazed at his house, the wreckage taking on the air of permanence.

"I'm like a farmer at the harvest," he said, "and my sickle is broken."
Fleeing to the Country



In the war that began March 20, the odds were stacked against Jassam's house, a four-room building of gray concrete and yellow brick. The neighborhood of Radwaniya was a redoubt of Baath Party repression, home to a palace of Hussein's, housing for his officers and barracks of his military elite. Even to those who lived there, its name had become a synonym for a killing field.

A few days after the war began, as Iraqi television aired patriotic songs, footage of goose-stepping soldiers and stock images of Hussein firing a rifle into the air, Jassam, his wife and his three children fled with two pillows, a blue-and-brown blanket and what they had left from government rations -- tea, rice, sugar, cooking oil and lentils. They piled into a battered orange-and-white taxi and, like hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, headed down the highway west for the safety of the countryside.

"We were escaping death," said his wife, Jamila Abed.

The driver was a friend. Rather than charge the going rate of 30,000 Iraqi dinars -- 10 times the prewar price -- he took them for free. It was, Jassam said, another instance of a community that pulled together, creating bonds that didn't exist before or afterward.

Within an hour, they were in fields irrigated by the Euphrates River, staying with a cousin who had opened his home to the families of three other relatives and six strangers. As tradition dictates, he provided his guests -- 35 in all -- with mattresses, blankets, food and drink. Jassam's family took up residence on the cold concrete floor of a guardhouse, next to a chicken coop.

For the weeks they were there, it provided the families' sustenance.

"We finished the whole coop," he said. "We ate chicken for lunch, we ate chicken for dinner. For breakfast, we had eggs."

The bombing was distant, but the threat of death lingered. The family recalled U.S. military helicopters flying low, suspicious of the crowds that had gathered at the farmhouse. They recalled the days of waiting, and they remembered the fear.

"Most of the time, I sat with my children in my lap," said Abed, a veiled woman whose bearing befits her university degree. "I'm a mother, and I love my children. If a missile landed, I'd want us to die together. I'd want them to die close to my heart."

Hussein was toppled on April 9, but they stayed for another 10 days or so, fearful of the chaos that followed in Baghdad. Over that time, they spoke little about the dictator, less about the future. Abed remembered one sentiment that overwhelmed them.

"There was no more death," she said.

In Baghdad, Jassam's house and two others were already destroyed -- flattened in a missile strike that came, as neighbors recalled, at 3:30 a.m. Scavengers had already picked the rubble clean of belongings. His neighbor, who stayed in Baghdad, lost his mother, sister, wife, two sons and a daughter. Weeks later, Jassam said, the man was seen wandering the streets, having lost his mind.
Life at the Hospital



Wearing a nurse's coat and the haggard look of the overwhelmed, Jassam tried to negotiate the demands of families streaming last week into Yarmouk Hospital, where he works a 24-hour shift three days a week managing a wing that treats broken bones. Gone was the civility and solidarity Jassam recalled from the war. In their place were confusion and chaos.

Some families were frustrated, some were angry. Their unmet demands were not unlike Jassam's, played out on a smaller stage. Most of them wanted a response, perhaps just an assurance that someone was in charge.

"What do you want from me?" the gaunt, 42-year-old Jassam carped as a young man entered his office, its yellow paint peeling.

To another, who threatened to complain, he said sternly, "If you want to complain, you can complain, a thousand times."

In came a father whose son was shot in the right leg during a carjacking. He asked for a stretcher. "Do I have stretcher? Does it look like I have a stretcher? Go ask one of the assistants." Another asked where Dr. Mohammed was, seeking help for a neighbor wounded in the left arm as he tried to stop a robbery. "God knows," Jassam answered, lingering on each word. "I don't know."

Arabic is infused with formalities. In most instances, the responses are reflexive, removing any awkwardness from an encounter. For Jassam, they could carry the edge of sarcasm. "God bless you for visiting us," he told a woman whom he turned away.

"Some people say, 'Please, can you give me an injection? Can you take my blood pressure? Can you give me a Band-Aid?' " he said, his desk stacked with tattered pink patients' folders. "Until now, I haven't done my prayers. I haven't done them. I have no time. I have no time to think. Since the fall of the government, after the destruction of my house, I've felt tense all the time, always.

"You should excuse me," he said.

For more than three months -- or, as Jassam puts it, 100 days -- his family lived down the hall in Room 14, unused at the time. To secure the deal, he agreed to work as an always-available nurse. Abed and the three children -- Mustafa, Rasul and Mariam -- lived on three hospital beds pulled together. Their clothing hung from curtain rods that once separated patients. The hospital administrator asked them not to wander the halls and, to fill their time, the children made dolls out of bandages and other supplies.

Since the summer, they have moved from house to house -- a week here, three days there, a few weeks at another home, sleeping -- as Abed said -- "like sausages." They now live at his mother's house, sharing the floor of his brother's room. Tape from the war still covers the windows to stop glass from shattering in a bombing. They cook on a white stove next to the bathroom.

"Any person who doesn't complain, who keeps smiling at me, I end up staying," Jassam said.

On this day, he sat in his office after the crowds dispersed. His son Mustafa, 9, who attends school nearby, sat on a cot with a soiled green blanket. He opened his notebook, adorned with pink flowers, and read a poem from his Arabic class.

"My house, my house, my house."

"How beautiful is the house."

"How beautiful is the person sitting inside with nightingales and flowers."

"My father and my mother are two suns lighting the house."

Jassam said nothing.
Compensation Denied



On a cool, sunny day last week, Jassam returned to the house, in a swath of impoverished Baghdad where rural and urban still collide. A feral dog picked at the rubble. Across the street, in a lot awash in sewage, two horses stood tethered to a wall. This time, he came alone. When he brought Mustafa this summer to see what it had become, the child cried so violently he vomited.

As he stood on the street, his neighbor, 36-year-old Shadha Hashim, approached him. Her house, too, was damaged.

"No one has given us any compensation," she shouted. "Whom do I file a complaint with? Why won't anyone help us?"

"God help you," Jassam said. After she left, he spoke from his own experience. "They'll ask anybody to help them," he said. "Everybody wants compensation. Everybody expects they should receive compensation, but no one is providing it."

Jassam first ventured back to his house 10 days after the war. They had lived there for 10 years, building it room by room and saving money for appliances by selling cans of government-rationed baby's milk for about $2. When he arrived, nothing was left.

"I imagined where my son was sitting, where my wife was sleeping. I knew that if I hadn't fled, I would be in the other world. Only God knows," he recalled. "I sat down on the ground. I put my head on my hands, and the neighbors came toward me."

They thanked God that he was alive, that his wife and children were safe.

"All the neighbors said, 'Come live in our house, our house is your house. Whatever you need is here,' " he remembered. "If they weren't crying for me with their eyes, they were crying in their hearts.

"It's difficult," he said. Then he repeated the words.

For two months, Jassam went repeatedly to a nearby U.S. military base. He prepared a claim form, photocopied his property deed and identity papers and tucked pictures of the damage in a manila folder. He shaved his beard, wore a white dress shirt striped with purple and put on a blue tie with red polka dots, the only one he owned. But after six visits to the base and a barely functioning courthouse, he was told bluntly if politely: The military was not responsible for damage inflicted during combat.

He said the interpreter working with U.S. forces told him he would have to wait until a government was established.

For a time, he considered going to two mosques in his neighborhood. The prayer leaders there offered to take a collection, even recruit worshipers to rebuild a room or at least a wall. But he said he was too proud to get their help. Dignity was all he had left.

"Until now I've refused," Jassam said. "You can imagine, it's difficult." Then he repeated the words.

It's in God's hands now, he said. "I've delivered my case to God."

In Arabic, Jassam's first name, Madhlum, means oppressed or wrongly treated. The irony prompted a rare smile.

"My name is Madhlum and I really am madhlum," he said, now laughing. "I'm madhlum, I'm madhlum, I'm madhlum. Until I die, I swear to God, I'll be madhlum, either under Saddam or under the Americans."
Uncertainty and Fear



Two phrases are heard often in Baghdad -- one a description, the other a proverb. The situation is taaban, people say -- it's tired or worn out. The other is more portentous: The ground is getting wetter. It means things are getting worse.

Jassam and his wife mentioned both.

Amid the cacophony of often-contradictory sentiments that define Baghdad, neither expressed anger at the U.S. forces, but both chafed at the idea of an occupation. They said they wanted the Americans to set up a government and help write a constitution -- in Jassam's words, "today rather than tomorrow."

But they feared the chaos that might follow the departure of U.S. forces in a country they said viewed freedom as anarchy, with its specter of sectarian and ethnic strife and threat of crime.

Sitting at the elementary school, where they picked up Mustafa, they talked of a city that was unfamiliar and uncertain.

"There's no government, there's no law. Who will listen to us?" asked Jassam, his eyes bleary after finishing a 48-hour shift. "Until now we don't know what the law is. Only God knows what will come in the following months."

The lack of authority dictated their lives, they said. Who would pay Jassam's salary next month? Who would bring down prices that have doubled for tomatoes, jumped 50 percent for meat and chicken? How would they save money for a house?

"What is democracy?" Abed asked, her daughter sitting in her lap. "What is democracy?"

"There are so many pressures on the people," she added. "If people feel happy, if they feel prosperous, then they can search for other things. But now the main worry is to get from day to day. Look at us, we're poor, what do we think about? We think about a house. We think about buying cooking gas and an oven. All of this was gone in a second."

She sat back in the couch in the headmaster's office, again a guest in a room not her own. She repeated a mantra heard countless times in Baghdad these days -- istiqrar and aman, stability and safety.

"A house is stability and safety," she said. "We have nothing in our hands. What can we do? With Saddam, we couldn't do anything. Now with the Americans, we can't do anything either. I hope, I wish the future will be good. But it's not in my hands."

As he often did, Jassam quoted a saying infused with faith. "God guides those who wish to be guided," he said.

Then, wounded by his wife's tears, he spoke in less lofty terms.

"I feel lost," he said. "If there is no home, you're completely lost. I feel like a stranger."

Judge behind anti-Saddam probing commission killed in Iraq: prosecutor

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Judge behind anti-Saddam probing commission killed in Iraq: prosecutor
 Nov 03, 2003

The judge behind the creation of a judicial commission to probe former officials of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s ousted regime was shot dead, as insurgents stepped up their campaign against pro-US public figures.

Muhan Jabr al-Shuwaili, the top judge in the central governorate of Najaf, was kidnapped along with Najaf prosecutor general Aref Aziz, from the judge's house in the city early Monday, Aziz said.

The two were taken in cars to a desert area eight kilometers (five miles) north of Najaf, he said.

"One of the assailants said 'Saddam has ordered your prosecution.' Then they fired two shots into his head," Aziz said.

"As for me, they told me 'this does not concern you'. They released me," he added.

In Baghdad, a member of a neighborhood council sponsored by the Americans was killed in a drive-by shooting late Sunday, the US-led coalition said in a statement on Monday.

"Mustafa Zaidan al-Khaleefa, the chairperson of the Karkh Neighborhood Council, was killed on Sunday evening ... while he was walking alone on Haifa street near his home" in central Baghdad, said the statement.

A white Toyota Corolla with no license plates drove up and one of its occupants shot him, it said.

The deadly shootings of the judge and the neighborhood council member were the third assassinations to be carried out against anti-Saddam figures in the past eight days.

Iraq Draws Muslim Militants From Europe

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...s&cid=540&ncid=1480

Iraq Draws Muslim Militants From Europe
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
 Nov 03, 2003

In interviews with The Associated Press, some European experts said they have evidence that young militants are being drawn to the struggle ? not hardened al-Qaida fighters, but men with no experience of Afghan training camps and little apparent connection to established terror groups, making them hard to track.

"Since the end of the war, there has been a large movement of people motivated by Islamic extremism from Germany and the rest of Europe toward Iraq," said a German security official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"They're people who want to fight a jihad (holy war)," said the official. "They see bleeding and dying American soldiers on television every day. It makes the Americans look vulnerable."

The number of fighters heading from Europe is sketchy, and would appear to make up only a fraction of militants heading to Iraq to fight. Nevertheless, the German security official said the numbers who have already left Europe for Iraq are "not inconsiderable."

Militants leaving Europe individually or in small groups bound for Iraq appear to be young Muslims without military training who have made a "spontaneous" decision to join the anti-American resistance, a Western intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

"It seems to be small groups.... Often, they're not even recognizable as groups," the official said. "They just don't crop up in the files."

Many European countries have tightened anti-terror laws to make it easier to detain and prosecute suspected terrorists.

But such rules have limited bite for young Muslims whose families have been in Europe for one or two generations and have citizenship in European countries, said Alex Standish of Jane's Intelligence Digest.

"Their foreign passport status gives them a greater mobility," Standish said.

Another anti-Saddam judge shot dead in Iraq

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Another anti-Saddam judge shot dead in Iraq
Nov 04, 2003

An Iraqi judge tasked with investigating officials of the ousted regime of president Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, in the second such killing in 24 hours, Iraqi police said.


AFP/File Photo

  

"Judge Ismail Yussef Saddek was gunned down Tuesday around 7:30 am (0430 GMT) Tuesday in front of his house ... by men in a car," a senior police official said in Mosul, 370 kilometers (230 miles) north of Baghdad.

"He died before reaching hospital," said Mohammed Seddik, a doctor at the Mosul emergency services.

On Tuesday, a judge also investigating former Saddam regime officials was shot dead in the central city of Najaf, according to a prosecutor who had been kidnapped with him.

Three US troops killed in Iraq - Throats Slit or Shot - but then Pummelled by the Crowd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3230690.stm

Three US troops killed in Iraq - Throats Slit or Shot - but then Pummelled by the Crowd
November 23, 2003

Witnesses said the two American soldiers had their throats cut but this was denied by a US military spokesman, who said they had been shot.

The two US soldiers were killed in the centre of Mosul after the attackers approached their vehicle in traffic and slit their throats, witnesses said. But a military spokesman said: "Two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed shortly after midday in west Mosul ...they were shot while en route from one compound to another."

The latest attacks brought to 185 the number of US soldiers killed in action since President George W Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over on 1 May.


Three U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Three U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq
By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer
November 23, 2003

MOSUL, Iraq - Gunmen killed two American soldiers driving through this northern Iraqi city Sunday, and then a crowd swarmed the scene, looting the soldiers' vehicle and pummeling their bodies, witnesses said. Another soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

The 101st Airborne Division said its soldiers in Mosul were shot while driving between U.S. garrisons. Several witnesses also said the soldiers were shot during the attack in the Ras al-Jadda district, though earlier reports by witnesses said assailants slit the soldiers' throats.

Bahaa Jassim, a teenager, said the soldiers' vehicle crashed into a wall after the shooting. Several dozen passers-by then descended on the wreckage, looting the car of weapons and the soldiers' backpacks.

After the soldiers' bodies fell into the street, the crowd pummeled them with concrete blocks, Jassim said.

A U.S. patrol then arrived and cordoned off the area, he said.

At a Sunday news conference, a U.S. military official would not discuss the circumstances surrounding the Mosul deaths.

"It is our policy that we do not go into specific details on injuries sustained by soldiers," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations. "We're not going to get ghoulish about this."

But Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations, said the coalition was "not worried in the least" by the continuing attacks on its forces. "We have nothing at this point that causes us to be concerned," he said. "This is an enemy that cannot defeat us militarily."


Three U.S. soldiers die in accidents

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/11/23/sprj.irq.main/

Three U.S. soldiers die in accidents
November 23, 2003

Two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed Sunday when their convoy came under attack by small-arms fire in the northern town of Mosul, according to a U.S. Army spokesman.

Witnesses told CNN the soldiers were shot and wounded while riding in a civilian vehicle. Men then cut the soldiers' throats while they were still in the vehicle and a crowd of Iraqis, including children, stripped their bodies of personal effects and weapons, the witnesses said. Shades of Black Hawk Down in Somailia ....

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt would not comment on the details of the incident. "This is a enemy that cannot defeat us militarily, and in engagement after engagement, we see the enemy breaking off, running away," he told reporters.

In addition, vehicle accidents claimed the lives of three other soldiers Friday and Saturday, and Iraqi sources said an Iraqi police colonel charged with security at oil installations was shot and killed in northern Iraq.

The deaths bring the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war to 432 -- 300 of them under hostile conditions. The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, this is the "War on Terrorism" period .... but the AP said the figure was based on records of only half of Iraq's hospitals and that the actual number was thought to be significantly higher.

U.S. Allies Pay Heavy Price for Iraq Assistance - South Koreas, Colombians, Japanese, & Spaniards Dead

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U.S. Allies Pay Heavy Price for Iraq Assistance - South Koreas, Colombians, Japanese, & Spaniards Dead
By Andrew Marshall
November 30, 2003

 Guerrillas killed a dozen people from four nations helping the U.S. military in Iraq (news - web sites) in weekend ambushes, sparking new concern among Washington's allies about the risks of getting involved in stabilizing the country.

Two South Koreans died on Sunday when their car was sprayed with bullets near Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown, a day after ambushes killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two Japanese diplomats and their Iraqi driver, and a Colombian contractor.

Officials in Seoul said the South Koreans killed on Sunday were electricity workers sub-contracted to an unnamed U.S. firm. Reuters journalists at the scene saw a car peppered with bullets.

The Koreans died on the same highway as two Japanese diplomats, who were gunned down by on Saturday along with their Iraqi driver as they bought food at a roadside stall.

The Colombian civilian contractor was killed and two colleagues were wounded when their convoy was ambushed on Saturday near Balad, north of Baghdad.

On Sunday morning, youths were jumping on the wreckage of the burned-out vehicles in which the Spaniards died.

"We're happy about what happened," said 20-year-old Abdul Qader, a student. "We don't like the Americans or the Spanish."

Facing the Horrific Every Day - Army Hospital in Baghdad Is First Refuge for U.S. Casualties

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...28?language=printer

Facing the Horrific Every Day - Army Hospital in Baghdad Is First Refuge for U.S. Casualties
By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 29, 2003

BAGHDAD -- The patient was talking. He had arrived one recent Saturday night at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, bare-chested and bleeding from wounds in both legs. In the emergency room, when his voice rose above the din of the machines and medical staff, it was a good sign.

"Oh, I'm doing dandy," the soldier said as he lay prone on a green Army litter, his tone dripping with sarcasm but not bitterness. Two medics wheeled him into Trauma Room No. 2, where everyone seemed to exhale with relief at the soldier's sense of humor. The ER staff, dressed in beige boots, camouflage pants and scrub tops, worked crisply but without the urgency that accompanies a patient near death.

"We're going to expose you, okay?" said Maj. Jason Boardman, a general surgeon from West Point, N.Y.

"I was born naked, it's okay," the soldier quipped. He turned his head to the side and told an administrator his name. VanBuren. Matthew. 21, from Kansas City, Kan. A private first class with the 1st Armored Division's HHC 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, a cavalry unit.

Using dull-tipped scissors, Lt. Hope Simmons, 25, a nurse from Tampa, carefully cut through the uniform pants. "Ow. If you press on my thigh again, I'm going to punch you," VanBuren deadpanned.

Soon VanBuren was naked except for a thin blue gown draped across his private parts. The medical staff pored over the rest of his body. Hot shrapnel from a roadside bomb had gouged the underside of his left thigh, leaving a hole the size of a grapefruit that oozed blood and flesh. On his lower right leg, another shrapnel wound was bleeding. His right shoulder was injured, but it was not clear how seriously.

"Just sit back and relax," Boardman told VanBuren. "We're going to do all the work."

Since the largest U.S. Army hospital in Iraq opened its doors on April 10, nearly all U.S. casualties have passed through its first-floor emergency room. Some come already dead. Some arrive with one arm instead of two, a shattered leg or a face wiped away by an explosion.

Assaults on U.S. troops have numbered as many as 45 a day in recent weeks. For the staff at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, located within the U.S.-led occupation authority's headquarters at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces, that translates into a dozen patients some days. Twenty-four hours in the hospital's emergency room with soldiers stripped of their uniforms and gritty exteriors revealed the physical and emotional toll.

About 70 percent of the hospital's patients are wounded soldiers; the rest are Iraqi civilians and prisoners, along with a small number of U.S. civilian contractors, said Maj. Mark White, director of patient administration.

The number of soldiers treated for serious combat injuries is not publicly disclosed. Instead, the hospital releases statistics on patient admissions -- a total of 1,659 U.S. soldiers through Oct. 30. The combined number of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi patients admitted per month has increased since September, and this month was expected to reach about 400, White said.

Soldiers stay here for up to two days; those with serious wounds requiring further treatment are sent on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and, if necessary, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"They come in here saying, 'Did he make it? Did my driver make it?' " said Lt. KomKwuan Pholtavee, 24, an ER nurse from Bellmore, N.Y. In their haze of pain and fear, she said, "I've had soldiers think that I'm their wife."

The worst that Maj. Michael Hilliard, 33, an emergency physician, saw back home in San Antonio were car crash and gunshot victims. Here, he estimates that he has treated the broken bodies of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers.

"The injuries are horrific," he said. "They are beyond anything that you see in a textbook, and they are the worst that I have ever seen."
'No Pulse, No Pulse!'



The ER night crew came on at 6 p.m. Some had finished up an unusually flavorful Army rations dinner of chicken fajitas. Others silently watched movies on a laptop computer or read e-mail.

The staff was clustered around the nurses' station outside the ER, tucked away in the back of the ground floor of the three-story, 76-bed hospital that was once the private clinic for Hussein's relatives. The large wooden desk had a clunky military telephone and radio keeping the staff in touch with the hospital's operations center, which would announce when a medical helicopter was about to arrive.

Around 8 p.m., the radio crackled.

"EMT, this is China Base," said a soldier at the center, using the hospital call sign.

"China Base, EMT," replied First Lt. Chris Haese, 33, an ER nurse from Brillion, Wis., who was listening for radio traffic.

"Air evac coming in. One litter, urgent, IED shrapnel," the soldier said.

A medical evacuation helicopter was carrying a soldier seriously wounded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb -- in military speak, an improvised explosive device, or IED.

Haese made a quick check of the supplies in Trauma Room 1. Simmons, the ER nurse, pulled on white rubber gloves and went through the ER's double receiving doors to wait. As the helicopter approached the helipad, three medics from the ER put on green helmets and climbed into what resembled a golf cart, then sped out of the hospital's black rear gates to pick up the patient.

The vehicle returned minutes later, a soldier hitched to the front. He lay on a narrow green stretcher, wrapped in a blanket. A resuscitator covered his nose and mouth, and the helicopter medic pumped the balloon to assist the soldier's breathing. The sky was black, but outdoor lights flooded the hospital's back parking lot.

"On the count of three," one medic said. "One, two, three!" Up went the soldier from the stretcher and onto a narrow wheeled cot. Blood had pooled on the black backboard left behind.

With a short run, they wheeled the patient into the trauma room. Hilliard stood at the head of the cot while the rest of the staff crowded around the sides, hooking up IVs, touching every inch of the soldier's body in a search for wounds and signs of life.

"Does he have a pulse?" Hilliard shouted. He turned around to reach for a sonogram that would show heart activity. "There's no pulse, no pulse!" a nurse responded.

The helicopter medic, still in his flight suit and helmet, quickly briefed Sgt. Dylan Jones, 26, of Philadelphia, the night medic in charge of operations. A roadside bomb had exploded in Sadr City, the Shiite Muslim slum in northeastern Baghdad. "I gotta go pick up another one," the medic said, and rushed out.

Flying shrapnel from the explosion had breached the soldier's skull and spattered blood on the right side of his face. Hilliard checked the extent of the injury. The soldier's helmet lay a few inches from his head, covered in blood on the right side.

The crisp, hurried movements of the trauma team slowed. Boardman, the general surgeon, ripped off his white latex gloves and walked away, muttering expletives.

Drops of dark red blood pooled on the white marble floor. The remaining staff peeled away from the soldier's bedside. Pvt. Kurt R. Frosheiser, 22, of Des Moines, was dead.

It was 8:17 p.m. Maj. Benjamin S. Gonzalez, 41, of Mesa, Ariz., assistant chief of emergency medicine at Walter Reed Army Hospital, now the chief of the Baghdad ER, was the first to speak.

"We've got another one coming in about three minutes," he said.
A Very Fine Line



Another patient dead, thought Maj. Fred H. Brennan, 38, a soft-spoken, bespectacled sports doctor from Fort Belvoir. A soldier.

"It's never easy to see it," Brennan said. "It's a very fine line for us between compassion and being hardened to it. You can't dwell on it for very long because it gets to you. We feel for him."

He sighed. "But if you dwell on him, you can't do your job."

VanBuren, the chatty soldier from Kansas, came in by ambulance, unaware that Frosheiser had arrived moments earlier. Both men were victims of the Sadr City bomb; VanBuren had been driving the Humvee when the explosion happened. He worried about his friend and feared the worst.

"God, I hope he's going to be okay," he said as he lay prone.

An Army chaplain quietly slipped into the trauma room and asked VanBuren if he could pray with him. He agreed. They clasped hands.

"My buddy Frosh, he was fresh out of basic," VanBuren said. "He got to the unit about a week ago, from Des Moines." He started to cry.

"I was teaching him my job so that if I got hurt, he could take over for me," he said, the tears sneaking out from the corners of his bright blue eyes.

"He was a good guy and a good soldier. I didn't want for him to die."

The commander of the hospital, Col. Beverly Pritchett, 46, from Buffalo, came into the trauma room to survey the scene, as she often does after a soldier's death or other serious incident.

Pritchett walked up to VanBuren in Bed No. 4, introduced herself and shook his right hand. She stroked his bare left shoulder.

"I'm going to take real good care of you," she said. "Just take some deep breaths."

"My mother, she's going to kill me," VanBuren said.

"No, she's not going to kill you," Pritchett answered softly. "She's going to be so happy that you're alive."

Across the room, Spec. Alrick Williams, 20, of Geist, Ind., waited for treatment in Bed No. 5. He had come in shortly after 9 p.m. with small, dark-red cuts from shrapnel on the right side of his face, near his right eyebrow. His head rested on a mud-brown Meals Ready to Eat bag. Williams, a gunner, was a member of the 716th Military Police Battalion.

"We went to Baghdad to pick up some supplies," Williams said slowly, squinting as a medic cleaned out his minor wounds with a squirt bottle.

"We were supposed to leave during the day, but we ended up leaving at night because we were waiting for another unit. There were seven vehicles. We picked up the rear, and then next thing you know, an IED goes off. It was very loud, and I went deaf for a minute, and I couldn't breathe."

Williams said he had already survived a previous rocket-propelled grenade attack, and in October his battalion lost a commander and two other soldiers in an ambush near a mosque in Karbala, south of Baghdad.

"I thank the Lord," Williams said. "We've already had three deaths in our battalion, and we don't need one again."

By 1 a.m., the ER was quiet. VanBuren was upstairs having orthopedic surgery to remove a shrapnel fragment embedded in his right leg. A corporal who had arrived with Williams and who had lost two inches of bone in his arm from the roadside blast was sleeping off his surgery. A soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division was in the ER operating room, while his commander sat outside, blank-faced and nervous. The ER staff settled back into the nurses' station and began to play cards.

"This is an average night; this is not even a busy night," said Simmons, the ER nurse.
'That Kid's a Hero'



Morning brought fresh faces, the day shift. The wait for patients resumed.

On the third floor, VanBuren lay on a hospital bed, surrounded by seven of his buddies. They had brought him a pair of spurs and a certificate honoring his bravery.

Spec. Ronald Dekker, 21, from Tucson, stood at VanBuren's bedside, listening. VanBuren told him he'd be leaving for Landstuhl in 24 to 48 hours.

"It'll be two to three weeks before I can be on my feet again," he said. Both of his legs were wrapped in white bandages.

His X-rays lay at the foot of his bed in a yellow envelope. The soldiers took them out and held them up to the light, curious to see the piece of shrapnel embedded in his leg bone.

The surgeon had given VanBuren the jagged bit of metal, which he kept by his bed in a small plastic cup with a lid. It was rectangular and narrow, a piece of artillery shell the size of half a pinky. VanBuren planned to keep it, melt it down and make it into a medallion he'd wear around his neck.

"It's all I have to remember my friend by," VanBuren said. He started to cry. Dekker reached down and gave him a hug.

Frosheiser had arrived in the unit about eight days before he died, VanBuren said. Because they both hailed from Midwestern cities and shared a love for the Kansas City Chiefs, VanBuren had taken the young soldier with delicate ears and a boyish smile under his wing.

VanBuren recalled that one Friday, usually a maintenance day for the trucks, lamenting the need to change a mirror and look at the transmission. VanBuren left for two hours on a mission, and when he came back, Frosheiser had put in a brand-new mirror, serviced the transmission and put in fluids.

"He knew it had to get done, and he got it done without being asked," VanBuren said. "I decided right at that point that this guy could be an excellent soldier. He needed someone to be there for him and teach him the ropes."

Staff Sgt. Darrell Clay, 32, from Fayetteville, N.C., also thought someone should show Frosheiser the ropes. When a call came to pick up a noncommissioned officer, Clay thought it might be useful to take along two of the unit's newest privates, including Frosheiser, so they could start to get a feel for the city.

"We were training them how to drive around Baghdad, Iraqi culture, what to expect during Ramadan, just getting them up to speed pretty much," he said, speaking softly in VanBuren's cramped hospital room.

VanBuren was the driver. Clay sat in the passenger seat. In the rear, a private named Plumley sat in the right seat and Frosheiser in the left. The gunner, Spec. Watson, peered out from the top.

"We were moving at a pretty fast clip," VanBuren said. "Then, all of a sudden, there was this nasty sound and smell of smoke and explosives. I couldn't hear much out of my left ear."

Clay told VanBuren to hit the gas. "My plan was to haul ass to get us to Assassins' Gate," VanBuren said, referring to the main gate of the U.S.-led administration headquarters in Baghdad.

"You did the right thing," Clay said.

That whole time, VanBuren said, he didn't hear a peep from his friend. Clay told VanBuren to pull over. "I didn't want to tell him why," he said, but it was to assess Frosheiser's condition.

When he stopped the Humvee, VanBuren got out and bandaged his own bleeding legs with the field dressing attached to his flack vest. His friend was slumped over in his seat.

Capt. Joel Raoelina, 37, of Logan, Utah, the chaplain of the battalion, stood in the corner of the room, listening, never chiming in. He had rushed over to the 28th Combat Support Hospital the evening before to see VanBuren. Then he stayed with Frosheiser's body in the hospital morgue, a small room near the ER trauma rooms.

Raoelina prayed with VanBuren that night. The chaplain never told him that Frosheiser had been killed.

"I don't think anybody told him," Raoelina said. VanBuren just knew.

At the end of the afternoon, VanBuren's company commander, Capt. Jonathan Redmond, came by. The soldiers in the unit cleared away so VanBuren could talk one-on-one with Redmond, the most senior officer in the room. Soon he hugged VanBuren and walked away. The rest of the unit followed suit, also giving hugs and filing out.

"I love you, man," Dekker said.

"I'll see you in a few months," VanBuren replied.

Redmond stood in the hospital hallway, the soldiers in the unit milling around him. "That kid's a hero," the commander said. "Let's pin the medallion on him, send him home and get him back in the fight as soon as he's ready."

100 Gitmo Detainees May Go Free

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/10/terror/main557846.shtml

100 Gitmo Detainees May Go Free
December 01, 2003

More than 100 prisoners will be released from U.S. custody at the detainment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and more will follow, military officials said.

It wasn't clear if the men and boys to be transferred from Guantanamo would face further detention or prosecution in their own countries. The first of two new transfers is scheduled for the end of December, and the other in January, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The official did not say where the prisoners would be sent and a military spokeswoman declined Sunday to provide details about future transfers from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We do expect there will be other transfers but because of operational procedures, I can't talk about any details," Lt. Col. Pamela Hart said. "We only talk about detainee movements after an operation is complete."

The military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that one of the boys who would be transferred shot and killed a special operations soldier in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001 and 11,500 American troops remain.

The official did not know why the boy was being released from U.S. custody, but the military has said previously that the main purpose of the detention mission is intelligence gathering.

On Sunday, a Canadian citizen returned home after being released in October from Guantanamo. Abdulrhaman Khadr was captured in Afghanistan and held as an "enemy combatant" by U.S. authorities for nine months, he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Khadr, the son of a suspected al Qaeda financier, said U.S. authorities refused to return him to Canada and instead flew him to Afghanistan.

After his release, Khadr went to Iran and then Turkey before arriving late last week in Bosnia, he told CBC.

At the Canadian Embassy in Sarajevo, Khader, who did not have a passport, was given a special permit to return to Canada, he told CBC. He was accompanied on his return to Toronto by a Canadian consular official.

The United States holds about 660 prisoners from 44 countries at the base in eastern Cuba but the government declines to provide a breakdown of their citizenship, ages or the reasons they are being held.

The government has not charged them or given them access to lawyers.

The United States has released 88 of the prisoners since the government began holding suspects at the base in Cuba in January 2002.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the official in charge of the detention mission, said Wednesday that the three youngest boys at the jail, who range from 13 to 15 would be transferred soon, but he did not give a date.

Before their capture by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, some of the youths held at the base were sexually abused; and they have received therapy at Guantanamo, the official said. The boys are kept separate from the adult population at the jail.

Separately, Britain and the United States are negotiating a deal to send nine British detainees back home.

Clive Stafford Smith, a U.S.-based British human rights lawyer, told The Observer, a British newspaper, that two of the nine British detainees, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, were likely to be released and not charged with a crime while the other seven would serve sentences in British jails after pleading guilty to unspecified charges in the United States.

The British Foreign Office declined to confirm the report and said that discussions with U.S. officials were continuing.

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk called the news of the upcoming releases "a clear indication that the White House is under pressure from allies as well as from the Supreme Court to set standards for the holding of suspects in the war on terror."

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether foreigners held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts. The appeals came from British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens held there.

There has been criticism of Bush administration plans to try some of the Guantanamo detainees in military tribunals. The American Bar Association has pressed the administration to drop plans to let agents eavesdrop on conversations between terrorism suspects and defense lawyers and should ease other restrictions to ensure military tribunals are fair and open.

President Bush has recommended six detainees, including the Australian and two Britons, to be the first to face tribunals. It has not definitely been decided that they will be tried, nor on what charges.

Once the prosecutor decides on charges, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz will then make a separate decision on whether the suspects will actually face trials by what the Pentagon calls military commissions.

The Pentagon has refused to state what the men were suspected of doing, where they were captured or where they might be tried. It also has not said what would happen if the men were found innocent, raising at least the possibility that they might still be detained even if acquitted.

Thwarted Ambush in Iraq - 54 dead - Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/internat...nted=print&position=

Thwarted Ambush in Iraq - 54 dead - Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say
By EDWARD WONG
December 01, 2003

American military officials said today that a pair of ambushes of American forces in central Iraq on Sunday reflected a level of planning, scale and coordination not seen among guerrilla forces since the regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted last spring.

"Are we looking at this one closely? Yes." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said today. "Is this something larger than we have seen over the past couple of months? Yes. Are we concerned about it? Yeah, we will look at it and we will take the appropriate measures."

American forces killed 54 people in the intense firefight in the town of Samarra after soldiers delivering Iraqi currency to two banks were bombarded with small-arms and antitank-grenade fire, General Kimmitt, a senior military spokesman, said. He added that 22 attackers had been wounded and that one had been detained. On Sunday, the military put the number of Iraqis killed at 46.

A military statement said that "many of the dead attackers were found wearing fedayeen uniforms," a reference to the militias loyal to Mr. Hussein that put up some of the fiercest resistance to the American-led invasion last spring.

American military officials said that the attackers had been moving in cars, had split their force of 30 to 40 people into smaller groups at each bank, and had set up ambush points on routes into and out of the city.

"It is our belief that this was a coordinated effort," Col. Frederick Rudesheim told reporters at a news conference outside Samarra today. He said the attackers had launched the ambush with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

The Associated Press quoted residents in Samarra as saying that American forces had responded by firing at random, prompting civilians to get guns and join the fight. The news agency said many civilians had expressed bitterness about recent American raids in the night.

Military officials said the clash was the largest battle in the country since coalition forces toppled the Hussein government last spring. They originally reported that at least 18 of the attackers had been wounded and 11 had been captured. General Kimmitt did not explain the discrepancies in the figures given on Sunday and today. No American deaths were reported.

The soldiers, members of the Fourth Infantry Division, met simultaneous ambushes on two convoys rolling separately through Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, according to a division spokesman, Master Sgt. Robert Cargie.

The convoys were delivering new Iraqi dinars to two banks and were guarded by about 100 American soldiers. When the shooting began, the Americans responded with automatic-rifle fire, Bradley fighting vehicles and other weapons, officials said.

Afterward, large shell casings, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles were strewn across the field of battle. So were dozens of bodies, apparently all Iraqi, many clad in the ninja-like black uniforms of fedayeen paramilitary fighters loyal to the overthrown Hussein government, according to Sergeant Cargie. Five American soldiers and one civilian traveling with one of the convoys were wounded.

Coalition firepower overwhelmed the attackers, Sergeant Cargie said.

The American display of firepower was among the most deadly for Iraqi fighters since the occupation began. But residents and police officers in Samarra said that less than a dozen Iraqis had been killed and contended that many of the wounded were civilians, The A.P. reported from the scene. The residents were clearly incensed at the immense firepower used by the Americans.

U.S. Forces Kill 54 Iraqis in Samarra - Biggest Display of Iraqi Insurgency

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...=540&e=5&u=/ap/iraq

U.S. Forces Kill 54 Iraqis in Samarra - Biggest Display of Iraqi Insurgency
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer
December 01, 2003

U.S. forces repulsed two coordinated attacks by insurgents in Samarra, killing 54 Iraqis in the bloodiest combat reported since the end of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime, the military said Monday.

But local residents said troops fired randomly at townspeople, and that most of those who died were civilians caught up in the clash.

The scale of the attacks and their apparent coordination indicated that rebel units retain the ability to conduct synchronized operations despite a massive U.S. offensive this month aimed at crushing the insurgency.

A U.S. military spokesman said the clash was initiated by attackers, many wearing uniforms of Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary force, who simultaneously attacked two U.S. convoys at opposite sides of Samarra, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Associated Press Television News images showed scenes of devastation, with buildings pockmarked by hundreds of bullet holes, and about two dozen badly damaged cars, apparently run over by armored vehicles. A bus abandoned in the middle of a street had its front sheared off. Fences and walls of several residential homes were destroyed, apparently by shelling.

Lt. Col. William MacDonald of the 4th Infantry Division said that after barricading a road, the attackers opened fire from rooftops and alleyways with bombs, small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. U.S. troops responded with 120mm tank rounds and 25mm cannon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles.

U.S. fire destroyed three buildings the attackers were using, MacDonald said. "It sounds like the attack had some coordination to it, but the soldiers responded, used their firepower, used tank and Bradley fire and other weapons available to them, to stop this attack and take the fight to the enemy," he said.

Samarra residents said most of those killed were ordinary townspeople who tried to flee the firefight.

"No one wants these Americans to enter this holy city. We don't want them to defile (it), and that's why this battle happened," said resident Mawlud Jassim. "Many Iraqis were killed and the Americans sustained big losses in lives and equipment."

Hossam Shaker, who had a shrapnel wound to his left arm, said a shell exploded among a group of workers walking out of the gate of the Samarra Pharmaceutical Plant at the end of the morning shift.

"American forces opened fire randomly on passersby and on (people) in the marketplace," said Shaker, interviewed Monday at the town's general hospital.

Seven Spanish intelligence agents and two Japanese diplomats died in separate attacks near Baghdad. - November 30, 2003

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Seven Spanish intelligence agents and two Japanese diplomats died in separate attacks near Baghdad.
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer
November 30, 2003

In Mahmudiyah, 18 miles south of Baghdad, assailants ambushed a team of Spanish military intelligence officers Saturday, killing seven agents. One Spaniard escaped the assault. Television footage of the aftermath of the ambush showed several bodies along a highway as cars, their headlights on, drove by at dusk. People milled around, and a young man ? apparently aware he was being filmed ? kicked his foot in the air over a body. Another rested his foot on a corpse, an arm raised in triumph. "We sacrifice our souls and blood for you, oh Saddam," some in the group chanted in Arabic, witnesses said.
</blockquote>
On Sunday, witnesses at the scene, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, said the Spaniards had been traveling in a pair of sport utility vehicles when men in a car behind them opened fire. One of the SUVs careered off the road into a ditch.

The occupants fled the car and were shot at the roadside, perhaps by a second group of attackers involved in the ambush. On Sunday, the charred remains of the car could be seen in a watery ditch at the side of the road, with a group of villagers scavenging its parts.

Witnesses said the four men in the second car were also killed at the side of the road nearby, apparently by a grenade. Blood could be seen on bushes nearby, and a broken pair of glasses lay on the road.

"All of them are Jews," said 15-year-old Tareq Jassim, a villager at the scene Sunday. "All of them are occupiers." </blockquote>

The two Japanese diplomats were killed by unidentified gunmen Saturday as they stopped to buy food and drinks at a stand outside the village of Mukayshifa on the road between Baghdad and Tikrit, Lt. Col. William MacDonald said Sunday.

The diplomats, on their way to attend a reconstruction conference, were not traveling with a military escort, MacDonald said.

The attacks on U.S. allies appear to be part of an effort to undercut the coalition. Insurgents also have targeted Iraqis seen as collaborating with the occupation authorities, such as police and local officials.

Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/internat...nted=print&position=

Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children
By CARLOTTA GALL
December 08, 2003

Their embroidered caps, shredded with shrapnel, lay beside a half-dozen small rubber galoshes and caked pools of blood. Seven boys and two girls died here on Saturday morning in an American airstrike, and their bodies were still lying in the dust when American soldiers arrived by helicopter to assess the results of the attack three hours later, villagers and American soldiers at the scene said Sunday.

A 25-year-old Afghan man was also killed, the villagers said, while the intended target, a Taliban suspect who lived here and bragged about attacking foreign aid workers, might have gotten away, contrary to official accounts that he, too, was among the dead. Some villagers said the suspect and his family, whose house was unscathed in the attack, had not been seen for weeks.

Villagers said the dead boys, who were 8 to 12 years old, had been in front of a house, and the girls, 9 and 10, had been fetching water from a stream alongside it when two American A-10 attack jets firing rockets and machine guns struck at 10:45 a.m.

"The boys were playing marbles," said one villager, thrusting forward a gnarled hand with three chipped glass marbles he said he had retrieved from the dust.

The rockets made 30 to 40 small craters in the ground around where the children had died. The 10th victim, an uncle of the two girls, rushed toward the stream after the first plane struck and was cut down beside them, said a woman who identified herself as the man's mother and the dead girls' grandmother.

Villagers in this small hamlet about 185 miles south of Kabul in southeastern Afghanistan said they buried the victims on Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, the men were mourning in an open-air mosque and the women were weeping inside the houses. As some men showed journalists and a government delegation around the scene of the killings, they wondered aloud how the Americans could attack so indiscriminately when searching for just one man who, they said, was not even in the village.

On the ground in the village, residents contradicted that assertion. Captain Cordeiro confirmed that the soldiers had found nine dead children and one dead adult who could have been the target, he said. But he said that the soldiers had not talked to villagers or identified the dead man.

Villagers said he was Abdul Muhammad, 25, who had returned 10 days earlier from Iran, where he had been working for three years digging wells. The woman who identified herself as his mother said she had finally arranged his wedding and he had returned for his engagement party, which was just five days away. "I was so pleased to have my son back," said the woman, who said her name was Guldana. "And now he is dead."

She had lost not only her son in the airstrike but her two granddaughters, Bibi Toara, 10, and Bibi Tamama, 9.

Two brothers in the village, Sarwar Khan and Hamidullah, lost three children between them, they said. "The Americans are all the time making these mistakes," said Mr. Khan, who two sons, Faizullah, 8, and Obeidullah, 10, were killed. "What kind of Al Qaeda are they? Look at their little shoes and hats. Are they terrorists?"

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in American airstrikes in the two years since the United States began its military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. After several disastrous raids last year in which planes bombed officials loyal to the Karzai government and after one incident that killed 48 civilians at a wedding party last July, the United States had appeared to restrict air assaults to more precise attacks, and only when groups of militants were engaged by coalition troops.


Coalition Strike in Afghanistan Kills 9 Children

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/international/asia/07AFGH.html

Coalition Strike in Afghanistan Kills 9 Children
By CARLOTTA GALL and JOHN H. CUSHMAN, Jr.
December 07, 2003

 United States warplanes attacking a suspected member of the Taliban killed nine children in the southeastern province of Ghazni on Saturday, Afghan and American military officials confirmed Sunday morning. One man was also killed in the attack, they said.

In a statement issued early on Sunday from the headquarters of the American-led military forces at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, the military said ground forces searching the area after the attack found the bodies of the children as well as the body of the suspect.

"Coalition forces regret the loss of any innocent life," the statement said. It said the troops remaining in the area "will make every effort to assist the families of the innocent casualties and determine the cause of the civilian deaths."

The statement said a commission was being set up to investigate the incident. It did not describe the air attack in any detail.

A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai in Kabul said that when first reports arrived from the region, the American military had denied that the attack occurred. Mr. Karzai has frequently asked the United States military to take greater care with bombing raids on civilian areas and with they intelligence it receives, which has often proved erroneous.

In another incident, eleven people from one family were killed when a bomb landed on their house near the Pakistani border in Paktika Province. The United States military quickly acknowledged the mistake, saying the attack was aimed at a group of militants whe were trying to escape across the border.

On Oct. 30. American planes bombed a village in the northern province of Nuristan, killing six members of one family, most of them women and children, and two religious students in the village mosque. The military has not yet confirmed that its planes were in the area that night.

From the BBC - *Mistakes accepted by US

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3298945.stm

Dec 2001: 65 killed in bombing of convoy of tribal elders

April 2002: Four Canadian soldiers killed

July 2002: 48 killed when bomb hits wedding party

April 2003: 11 killed by bomb in village of Shkin

Dec 2003: Nine children killed by bomb near Ghazni

Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/internat...nted=print&position=

Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children
By CARLOTTA GALL
December 08, 2003

Their embroidered caps, shredded with shrapnel, lay beside a half-dozen small rubber galoshes and caked pools of blood. Seven boys and two girls died here on Saturday morning in an American airstrike, and their bodies were still lying in the dust when American soldiers arrived by helicopter to assess the results of the attack three hours later, villagers and American soldiers at the scene said Sunday.

A 25-year-old Afghan man was also killed, the villagers said, while the intended target, a Taliban suspect who lived here and bragged about attacking foreign aid workers, might have gotten away, contrary to official accounts that he, too, was among the dead. Some villagers said the suspect and his family, whose house was unscathed in the attack, had not been seen for weeks.

Villagers said the dead boys, who were 8 to 12 years old, had been in front of a house, and the girls, 9 and 10, had been fetching water from a stream alongside it when two American A-10 attack jets firing rockets and machine guns struck at 10:45 a.m.

"The boys were playing marbles," said one villager, thrusting forward a gnarled hand with three chipped glass marbles he said he had retrieved from the dust.

The rockets made 30 to 40 small craters in the ground around where the children had died. The 10th victim, an uncle of the two girls, rushed toward the stream after the first plane struck and was cut down beside them, said a woman who identified herself as the man's mother and the dead girls' grandmother.

Villagers in this small hamlet about 185 miles south of Kabul in southeastern Afghanistan said they buried the victims on Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, the men were mourning in an open-air mosque and the women were weeping inside the houses. As some men showed journalists and a government delegation around the scene of the killings, they wondered aloud how the Americans could attack so indiscriminately when searching for just one man who, they said, was not even in the village.

On the ground in the village, residents contradicted that assertion. Captain Cordeiro confirmed that the soldiers had found nine dead children and one dead adult who could have been the target, he said. But he said that the soldiers had not talked to villagers or identified the dead man.

Villagers said he was Abdul Muhammad, 25, who had returned 10 days earlier from Iran, where he had been working for three years digging wells. The woman who identified herself as his mother said she had finally arranged his wedding and he had returned for his engagement party, which was just five days away. "I was so pleased to have my son back," said the woman, who said her name was Guldana. "And now he is dead."

She had lost not only her son in the airstrike but her two granddaughters, Bibi Toara, 10, and Bibi Tamama, 9.

Two brothers in the village, Sarwar Khan and Hamidullah, lost three children between them, they said. "The Americans are all the time making these mistakes," said Mr. Khan, who two sons, Faizullah, 8, and Obeidullah, 10, were killed. "What kind of Al Qaeda are they? Look at their little shoes and hats. Are they terrorists?"

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in American airstrikes in the two years since the United States began its military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. After several disastrous raids last year in which planes bombed officials loyal to the Karzai government and after one incident that killed 48 civilians at a wedding party last July, the United States had appeared to restrict air assaults to more precise attacks, and only when groups of militants were engaged by coalition troops.


Coalition Strike in Afghanistan K

Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns - Wrapping Entire Villages in Barbed Wire

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/internat...nted=print&position=

Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns - Wrapping Entire Villages in Barbed Wire
By DEXTER FILKINS
December 07, 2003

ABU HISHMA, Iraq, Dec. 6 ? As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.

In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in.

The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories.

So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over. Abu Hishma is quiet now, but it is angry, too.

In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.

"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."

The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side, an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger.

"I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."

The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender.

The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out.

American officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare. The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping the Americans in Iraq.

Writing in the July issue of Army magazine, an American brigadier general said American officers had recently traveled to Israel to hear about lessons learned from recent fighting there.

"Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and address those lessons, embedding and incorporating them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training," Brig. Gen. Michael A. Vane wrote. "For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas." General Vane is deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy, at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command.

American officers here say their new hard-nosed approach reflects a more realistic appreciation of the military and political realities faced by soldiers in the so-called Sunni triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad that is generating the most violence against the Americans.

Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force ? force, pride and saving face."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, announced the get-tough strategy in early November. After the announcement, some American officers warned that the scenes that would follow would not be pretty.

Speaking today in Baghdad, General Sanchez said attacks on allied forces or gunfights with adversaries across Iraq had dropped to under 20 a day from 40 a day two weeks ago.

"We've considerably pushed back the numbers of engagements against coalition forces," he said. "We've been hitting back pretty hard. We've forced them to slow down the pace of their operations."

In that way, the new American approach seems to share the successes of the Israeli military, at least in the short term; Israeli officers contend that their strategy regularly stops catastrophes like suicide bombings from taking place.

"If you do nothing, they will just get stronger," said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He briefed American marines on Israeli tactics in urban warfare in September.

The problems in Abu Hishma, a town of 7,000, began in October, when the American military across the Sunni triangle decided to ease off on their military operations to coincide with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

In Abu Hishma, as in other towns, the backing off by the Americans was not reciprocated by the insurgents. American troops regularly came under mortar fire, often traced to the surrounding orchards.

Meanwhile, the number of bombs planted on nearby roads rose sharply. Army convoys regularly took fire from a house a few miles away from the village.

The last straw for the Americans came on Nov. 17, when a group of guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier. The grenade, with an armored piercing tip, punched through the Bradley's shell and killed Staff Sgt. Dale Panchot, one of its crewmen.

The grenade went straight into the sergeant's chest. With the Bradley still smoldering, the soldiers of the First Battalion, Eighth Infantry, part of the Fourth Infantry Division, surrounded Abu Hishma and searched for the guerrillas. Soldiers began encasing the town in razor wire.

The next day, an American jet dropped a 500-bomb on the house that had been used to attack them. The Americans arrested eight sheiks, the mayor, the police chief and most members of the city council. "We really hammered the place," Maj. Darron Wright said.

Two and a half weeks later, the town of Abu Hishma is enclosed in a barbed-wire fence that stretches for five miles. Men ages 18 to 65 have been ordered to get identification cards. There is only way into the town and one way out.

"This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the barbed-wire fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot."

American forces have used the tactic in other cities, including Awja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. American forces also sealed off three towns in western Iraq for several days.

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said.

The bombing of the house, about a mile outside the barbed wire, is another tactic that echoes those of the Israeli Army. In Iraq, the Americans have bulldozed, bombed or otherwise rendered useless a number of buildings which they determined were harboring guerrillas.

In Tikrit, residents pointed out a home they said had been bulldozed by American tanks. The occupants had already left, they said.

"I watched the Americans flatten that house," said Abdullah al-Ajili, who lives down the road.

American officers acknowledge that they have destroyed buildings around Tikrit. In a recent news conference, General Sanchez explained the strategy but ignored a question about parallels to the Israeli experience.

"Well, I guess what we need to do is go back to the laws of war and the Geneva Convention and all of those issues that define when a structure ceases to be what it is claimed to be and becomes a military target," General Sanchez said. "We've got to remember that we're in a low-intensity conflict where the laws of war still apply."

In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night.

But mostly, it is a loss of dignity that the villagers talk about. For each identification card, every Iraqi man is assigned a number, which he must hold up when he poses for his mug shot. The card identifies his age and type of car. It is all in English.

"This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage."

Colonel Sassaman said he would maintain the wire enclosure until the villagers turned over the six men who killed Sergeant Panchot, though he acknowledged they may have slipped far away.

Colonel Sassaman is feared by many of Abu Hishma's villagers, who hold him responsible for the searches and razor wire around the town. But some said they understood what a difficult job he had, trying to pick out a few bad men from a village of 7,000 people.

"Colonel Sassaman, you should come and live in this village and be a sheik," Hassan Ali al-Tai told the colonel outside the checkpoint.

The colonel smiled, and Mr. Tai turned to another visitor.

"Colonel Sassaman is a very good man," he said. "If he got rid of the barbed wire and the checkpoint, everyone would love him."

Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...civilian_casualties

Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead
By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer
December 10, 2003

Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry's statistics department told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The health minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, denied that he or the U.S.-led occupation authority had anything to do with the order, and said he didn't even know about the survey of deaths, which number in the thousands.

Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department, said the order came from the ministry's director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar, who told her it was on behalf of Abbas. She said the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, didn't like the idea of the count either.

"We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," she said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."

Abbas, whose secretary said he was out of the country, sent an e-mail denying the charge.

"I have no knowledge of a civilian war casualty survey even being started by the Ministry of Health, much less stopping it," he wrote. "The CPA did not direct me to stop any such survey either."

"Plain and simple, this is false information," he added.

Despite Abbas' comments, the Health Ministry's civilian death toll count had been reported by news media as early as August, and the count was widely anticipated by human rights organizations. The ministry issued a preliminary figure of 1,764 deaths during the summer.

A spokesman for the CPA confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail, saying the occupation authority contacted the minister by phone and asked him to respond. The CPA didn't provide a phone number, and the minister didn't respond to e-mails requesting further comment.

The CPA spokesman said the coalition had no comment.

Shabandar's office said he was attending a conference in Egypt.

The U.S. military doesn't count civilian casualties from its wars, saying only that it tries to minimize civilian deaths.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, called that policy irresponsible.

"That deliberate ignorance of the past risks condemning the U.S. military to repeating its mistakes into the future and needlessly risking further civilian deaths," he said by telephone from New York.

Roth said the government doesn't count because "politically, it's embarrassing to talk about civilian casualties in one's war effort."

The Associated Press conducted a major investigation of Iraq (news - web sites)'s wartime civilian casualties, documenting the deaths of 3,240 civilians between March 20 and April 20. That investigation, conducted in May and June, surveyed about half of Iraq's hospitals, and reported that the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher.

The Health Ministry's count, which was to be based on the records of all Iraq's hospitals, promised to be more complete.

The ministry began its survey at the end of July, when shaky nationwide communication links began to improve. It sent letters to all hospitals and clinics in Iraq, asking them to send back details of civilians killed or wounded in the war, ministry officials said then.

Many hospitals responded with statistics, Mohsen said, but last month Shabandar told her that Abbas wanted the count halted. He also told her not to release the information she had already collected, she said.

"He told me, `You should move far away from this subject,'" Mohsen said. "I don't know why."

Abbas, the minister, suggested such a study wouldn't be feasible.

"It would be almost impossible to conduct such a survey, because hospitals cannot distinguish between deaths that resulted from the coalition's efforts in the war, common crime among Iraqis, or deaths resulting from Saddam's brutal regime," he wrote.

In fact, the ministry didn't plan to distinguish between casualties caused by U.S. and Iraqi attacks. The AP survey didn't make the distinction either, instead counting all civilian deaths in the war.

Mohsen insisted that despite communications that remain poor and incomplete record-keeping by some hospitals, the statistics she received indicated that a significant count could have been completed.

"I could do it if the CPA and our minister agree that I can," she said in an interview in English.

The number of U.S. soldiers killed in the war is well documented. The Pentagon (news - web sites) says 115 American military personnel were killed in combat from the start of the war to May 1, when President Bush (news - web sites) declared major combat over, and 195 since. Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime fell April 9.

Iraqi civilians, too, have continued to die both in U.S. raids of suspected insurgent hideouts and in the rebels' attacks.

Rebels have struck at U.S. military convoys and installations, as well as at Iraqis — such as police officers, politicians and interpreters — who they consider to be collaborating with the coalition forces.

Iraq kept meticulous records of its soldiers killed in action but never released them publicly. Military doctors have said the Iraqi military kept "perfect" records, but burned them as the war wound down.

Cluster Bombs, Decapitation Bombing Killed Hundreds, Says Human Rights Watch

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...4536750811071238212

Cluster Bombs, Decapitation Bombing Killed Hundreds, Says Human Rights Watch
Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
December 12, 2003

WASHINGTON D.C., Dec. 12 (OneWorld) Hundreds of civilians were killed by Coalition cluster bombs and air strikes designed to decapitate the Iraqi leadership, according to a new report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the high cost in civilian casualties caused by the two tactics may have violated the laws of war

The report, which found that U.S.-led Coalition forces in Iraq (news - web sites) generally tried to comply with international humanitarian law, nonetheless concluded that U.S. ground forces were too eager to use cluster munitions in populated areas, and that 50 decapitation attacks failed to hit a single one of their targets, but caused dozens of civilian deaths and injuries.

Coalition forces generally tried to avoid killing Iraqis who werent taking part in combat, said Kenneth Roth, HRWs executive director. But the deaths of hundreds of civilians could have been prevented.

The 147-page report, Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq, also details numerous violations of international humanitarian law by Iraqi forces, including their use of human shields, the abuse of Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems, the use of anti-personnel landmines, and the deployment of weapons and other military equipment in mosques, hospitals and archaeological and cultural sites.

In many cases, the Iraqi military failed to take adequate precautions to protect civilians from military operations, and its practice of donning civilian clothes necessarily put other civilians at risk.

International humanitarian law does not outlaw all civilian casualties in wartime, but it requires armed forces to take all feasible precautions to avoid harming civilians. It also requires them to refrain from attacks that are indiscriminate or where the anticipated harm to civilians exceeds the possible military gain.

The report is based primarily on the research of three experts who conducted battle damage assessment (BDA) missions to the main areas of fighting in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys where civilian deaths had been reported and other sites where cluster bombs were used. The delegation also relied on hospital and U.S. military records it was able to obtain.

HRW has previously conducted BDA missions to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (news - web sites).

At each of the sites, the team studied the ballistic evidence and interviewed Coalition soldiers, residents, and victims for their accounts of what took place. Because Iraqi soldiers dispersed during the war, however, HRW said it proved virtually impossible to find any who took part in specific battles.

The team did not try to estimate the total number of civilian deaths that resulted from hostilities during the war. The Associated Press (AP) estimated after canvassing 60 of Iraqs 124 hospitals immediately after the war that well over 3,420 civilians were killed, while the Los Angeles Times concluded that at least 1,700 civilians were killed and more than 8,000 more injured in Baghdad after it surveyed 27 hospitals there.

London-based Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, concluded in a study released last month that a total of between 5,700 and 7,356 civilians were killed between March 20 and May 1 as a result of hostilities. AP also reported Wednesday that an effort by the Iraqi health ministry to count the total number of casualties was suspended this week, allegedly on orders from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

The report concluded that the use of cluster weapons, particularly by U.S. and British ground forces, caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the Coalitions military campaign in March and April. U.S. and British forces together used almost 13,000 cluster munitions, containing a total of nearly two million submunitions, or bomblets, that killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians.

Most of the civilian casualties resulting from the air war occurred during a total of 50 U.S. attacks that targeted the Iraqi leadership, including two high-profile attacks against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) himself, one of which killed 18 civilians and destroyed three homes in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad. According to the report, each of the attacks missed their target, and Iraqis who spoke to HRW about the attacks it investigated stated repeatedly that they believed the intended targets, including the Mansur attacks on Hussein, were not even present when the strikes took place.

HRW found that the militarys decapitation strategy relied almost exclusively on intercepts of satellite phones backed up by inadequate corroborating intelligence. Thuraya satellite phones used by the leadership provide geo-coordinates that are accurate to within only a 328-foot (100-meter) radius, and thus U.S. intelligence could not determine the origin of a call with a high degree of accuracy, particularly considering that population density of the targeted areas.

This flawed targeting strategy was compounded by a lack of effective assessment both prior to the attacks of the potential risks to civilians and after the attacks of their success and utility, according to the report.

The decapitation strategy was an utter failure on military grounds, since it didnt kill a single Iraqi in 50 attempts, said Roth. But it also failed on human rights grounds. Its no good using a precise weapon if the target hasnt been located precisely, he added.

On the other hand, HRW found that Coalition air strikes against pre- planned fixed targets apparently caused few civilian casualties, and the U.S. and British air forces generally avoided civilian infrastructure, although so-called dual-use targets, that included electrical and media facilities were hit.


 
The report also praised the relative restraint on the part of the U.S. Air Force in using cluster bombs, noting that frequency of its use of such weapons has progressively declined from the 1999 Kosovo campaign and the 2001 Afghanistan war.

But U.S. ground forces resorted much more readily to cluster munitions, according to Ross, who said they need to learn the lesson that the Air Force seems to have adopted: cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life.

In a single day, U.S. cluster-munition attacks in Hilla on March 31 killed at least 33 civilians and injured 109, while the same weapon was implicated in high civilian casualties in Najaf and Nasariya, as well. One hospital director told HRW that cluster munitions caused 90 percent of the civilian injuries that his hospital treated during the war.

Moreover, the Coalition is believed to have left behind many tens of thousands of cluster-munition duds, those that did not explode on impact and then become de facto landmines that have already caused dozens of casualties.

The report also took Coalition forces to task for failing to secure vast arsenals of weapons that were abandoned by Iraqi forces during the war. Not only have these been used to mount guerrilla attacks on Coalition forces, but many civilians, including children, searching for playthings or scrap metal have been killed or injured at these sites, the report said.

War and Never Having to Say You're Sorry - McNamara the Vietnam Villian

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/movies/1...nted=print&position=

War and Never Having to Say You're Sorry
By SAMANTHA POWER
December 14, 2003

SOMETIME in the mid-1960's, the Vietnam War became known as "McNamara's War." In the seven years Robert S. McNamara served as Secretary of Defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon. B. Johnson, the United States commitment in Vietnam soared ? in a soothingly gradual fashion ? from fewer than a thousand Americans to just under half a million. Mr. McNamara, in turn, went from being heralded as a whiz kid to being hounded as a war monger. In 1965, a Quaker protester set himself on fire below Mr. McNamara's Pentagon office window. In 1967, antiwar activists tried to burn down the his vacation home in Aspen, Colo. And in 1972, an artist who spotted him on a ferry tried to heave him into the Atlantic Ocean.

A quarter of a century later, Mr. McNamara broke his silence, publishing "In Retrospect," his best-selling memoir. He asked how he and his fellow leaders could have pushed for a war he at last acknowledged was "wrong, terribly wrong." But after the deaths of three million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans, many saw Mr. McNamara's public reckoning as, at best, incommensurate with the carnage and at worst, dishonest and self-serving. In a stinging editorial in 1995, The New York Times dismissed his "prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late," contrasting the fates of the dead with that of Mr. McNamara, who, despite his torment, "got a sinecure at the World Bank and summers at the Vineyard."

The debate over Vietnam and the debate over Robert McNamara ? debates that overlap, but that over the years have grown distinct ? refuse to subside, partly because Mr. McNamara, now 87, refuses to go away. In "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara," opening Friday, Errol Morris, the ingenious Cambridge-based director of such documentaries as "The Thin Blue Line" and "Mr. Death," has given Mr. McNamara a big-screen chance to reflect upon a career of watching fallible human beings like himself make decisions that imperil or extinguish human lives.

While Mr. McNamara uses the film to propagate the "lessons" of his six decades in public life, Mr. Morris has another agenda: to raise questions that are moral, timeless and rarely broached with such subtlety. How do decent men commit or abet evil acts? And once they have done so, how should they interact with their victims, live with their consciences and pass along their insights? It is the indefatigable relevance of these questions that keep Americans at once enthralled and repelled by Robert S. McNamara. And it is the long-standing aversion of American decision-makers to address past mistakes that has helped undermine the American standing around the world and has hindered our ability to learn from history.

Mr. Morris is a first-class investigator, and he has hunted down fresh and provocative material, on subjects like the firebombing of the Japanese in World War II and Kennedy's intentions regarding Vietnam. He has elicited from Mr. McNamara a number of startling admissions. And he has released the film at a time when war and quagmire are very much on the mind of Americans. Revisiting Vietnam and the images of sprightly young G.I.'s so eager to serve, one is reminded how soldiers can be led astray by reckless ideology, shoddy intelligence and liberal hubris; how small, sequential decisions necessitate and compound one another; and how our faith in our own good intentions and our ignorance of local culture can undermine our objectives. (Among the 11 lessons Mr. Morris gleans from Mr. McNamara, Lesson No. 1 is "empathize with the enemy.")

But Mr. Morris is less interested in policy than in metaphysics. In a recent interview in New York, where he was promoting the film, he said he first became interested in Mr. McNamara because of an "endless fascination" with the extent to which "people who engage in evil believe in some real sense that they are doing good." Mr. Morris seems reflexively drawn to the gray zones of human morality. If "real Iagos" permeated the planet, the filmmaker rightly notes, life would be simpler, and in the end, probably safer. But the story gets more complicated when a man like Robert McNamara ? who is not only debonair, but introspective and self-critical ? comes along. "If evil is somewhat more ineluctable, it also becomes somewhat more problematic," Mr. Morris observes. "What is it? Where is it? Is it in some of us? Is it in all of us?"

And under what circumstances, he might have added, can we rationalize it? The most stirring scenes in "The Fog of War" surround America's firebombing of 67 Japanese cities in World War II, during which time Mr. McNamara was working under Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Air Force. Mr. Morris unearthed spine-curdling government reports showing the raw calculus undertaken to speed America's victory. "In order to do good," Mr. McNamara says, articulating the film's ninth lesson, "recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil." In a single bombing raid, he recalls, "We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo ? men, women and children." Some 900,000 Japanese civilians were killed overall. Was he aware this would happen? "Well, I was part of a mechanism that in a sense recommended it," Mr. McNamara tells Mr. Morris. "Lemay said, `If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He ? and I'd say I ? were behaving as war criminals." He asks, "What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" The answer, of course, is that war's winners write the history books, and, if they can help it, they avoid legal accountability.

When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war. And even after he was forced out by President Johnson in 1967, he refused to air his criticisms, though the war raged on for another eight long years.

Today he declines comment on Iraq out of the same sense of bureaucratic loyalty. To the suggestion that dissent is often the highest form of loyalty, he responds, "I think it's irresponsible for an ex-secretary of defense to comment, particularly if the comments are critical ? about a president who is in the midst of a war with tens of thousands of American lives at risk, and is dealing with very, very delicate issues and relationships with other nations and with the U.N., and therefore I haven't and I'm not going to."

But Mr. McNamara's views can be inferred from the film. "What makes us omniscient," he asks, rhetorically. "Have we a record of omniscience?" He concludes, "If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merits of our case, we better re-examine our reasoning."

Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen. In fact, Mr. McNamara is one of very few senior American government officials ever to admit major error without being forced to do so. In an interview last month, I asked him why. "People don't want to admit they made mistakes," he said. "This is true of the Catholic Church, it's true of companies, it's true of nongovernmental organizations and it's certainly true of political bodies. My rule has been to surface the tough problems. It's very unpleasant to argue with people you admire and associate with. But you have to force debate."

BY now, Mr. McNamara has learned how to speak about the trauma in his past in much the same way one learns to speak of the death of a loved one: by rote. In our conversation, he often repeated verbatim what he had said on camera. If a question probed tender territory, he pivoted, transitioning skillfully to one of his policy causes, like nuclear nonproliferation or the International Criminal Court. But despite all his best efforts, Mr. McNamara still broke down several times during the filming of "The Fog of War" ? "a sign of weakness," he told me, embarrassed. On camera, he remains stoic as he says that his wife and son got ulcers when he was secretary of defense, and that his wife, who died in 1981, "may even ultimately have died from the stress." Mr. McNamara's emotions get the better of him when he goes on to say something he must know to be untrue. "But," he insists, waving his pen for emphasis, "they were some of the best years of our lives and" ? here the tears start ? "all members of my family benefited from it." He quickly masters the lump in his throat, and proclaims, unconvincingly: "It was terrific." In our interview, Mr. McNamara's eyes filled with tears at precisely the same moment. Though some politicians are known to muster tears as a ploy for sympathy, in the case of Mr. McNamara, who is famously controlling, they seemed anything but calculated; rather, they offered evidence that his public poise is outmatched by his personal demons.

Remarkably, what seems to grate at people most about Mr. McNamara these days is less his role in shaping a disastrous Vietnam policy than what many take to be his public martyrdom. While it is true that his reckoning is partial and unsatisfying, and while it is true that the book did help launch him back into the limelight, it is also true that he had a lot to lose by awakening the ghosts of Vietnam. By choosing to excavate the past, he has exposed himself to ridicule, resuscitated his lowest moments in public life and let an emotional genie out of the bottle. And since Mr. McNamara seems to have generated more scorn than those who never acknowledged error ? e.g., Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, and three American presidents ? it is unlikely that other officials will be eager to follow his example.

In the absence of full-fledged Congressional investigations, American policymakers rarely look back. They are bound by continuity and fealty across administrations and generations. With the proliferation of class-action suits and the advent of global courtrooms, American officials are now explicitly counseled to avoid public reckoning, for fear of creating legal liability (or constraining their ability to do it all over again, when it suits them). Whether regarding the Vietnam War, America's cold war assassinations or our misguided former alliance with Saddam Hussein, American officials keep their eyes fixed on the future. They rarely admit responsibility for failure, for costly meddling or for large-scale human suffering. They resist debate ? internally or publicly ? on how good intentions went astray. And they most certainly don't apologize to those harmed.

On those the rare occasions when American officials have expressed remorse for previous policies, they have tended to do so offhandedly. And while on these shores, such utterances were ignored or derided as insincere, in the countries grievously affected, many victims and survivors welcomed the gesture with surprising grace.

In keeping with tradition, Mr. McNamara has never apologized to the Vietnamese or the American people for the Vietnam War. But he has broken with house rules by expressing regret for mistaken policy choices. "I'm very proud of my accomplishments," he says in the film. "I'm very sorry that in the course of accomplishing something I made errors."

Errol Morris says Mr. McNamara's failure to apologize used to trouble him. But after taping 23 hours of interviews with him, and sharing many more meals and phone calls, the discomfort subsided. In truth, Mr. Morris says, he has come to like Robert McNamara, and to understand why so many of the tirades against him find fault with a "mea culpa" that he never issued. "An apology empowers us," Mr. Morris said, during our interview. "The person says, `I'm very, very, very sorry,' and we can say, `I accept your apology,' or we can say, `Sorry, but saying sorry is not enough.' People so strongly wanted to say, `I do not forgive you for what you've done' that they imagined an apology that didn't exist."

Of course, compiling the lessons of history hardly guarantees that they will be applied. Soon after Donald Rumsfeld assumed the job of secretary of defense in 2000, he actually took the unusual step of circulating a handout that distilled his 40 years of service. Mr. Rumsfeld's lessons were not dissimilar from those Mr. Morris elicited from Mr. McNamara. They include:

"It is easier to get into something than to get out of it."

"Don't divide the world into `them' and `us.' "

"Visit with your predecessors from previous administrations . . . Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs."

The lessons, known as "Rumsfeld's Rules," were posted on the Pentagon Web site when Mr. Rumsfeld took office. They have since been removed.

Samantha Power's book, "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," won the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction this year.

Israeli Commandos Refuse to Serve in W.Bank, Gaza

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...israel_commandos_dc

Israeli Commandos Refuse to Serve in W.Bank, Gaza
By Megan Goldin
December 21, 2003

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thirteen fighters in Israel's most celebrated commando unit have publicly refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because they believe the army's operations there are immoral, Israeli media reported.

The commandos announced their refusal to serve in a letter sent to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has come under increased pressure to halt efforts to quash a three-year-old Palestinian uprising and instead engage in peace treaty talks. "We will no longer be party to an oppressive rule in the territories and the disregard for the human rights of millions of Palestinians," the 13 Sayeret Matkal reservist commandos wrote in their letter, according to local television stations.

"We will no longer be a defensive wall against settlements," added the letter, in a reference to Jewish settlements in lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Sayeret Matkal, or General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, is Israel's most elite commando unit and has often been compared to the U.S. military's Delta Force or the British army's SAS.

It has carried out some of the Israeli army's most daring missions including the rescuing of 106 passengers taken hostage by Palestinian guerrillas at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976.

During the uprising, the Sayeret Matkal has been involved in raids to arrest senior Palestinian militant commanders behind a suicide bombing campaign against Israel.

The commandos' letter followed a petition earlier in the year from 27 air force pilots -- all but nine of whom had retired -- as refusing to carry out missions against Palestinian militants in which civilians could be killed.

The 13 signatories to the commando letter were all identified as being reservists, but it was not clear how many were still involved in active military duty.

Sharon's office declined to comment, but military officials described the letter as political, noting that it was sent to Sharon and not military commanders.

"It is very serious that reserve soldiers are using their military past and the name of the unit in which they served as a vehicle to publish their political views," an army spokesman said about the letter.

One of the signatories, identified as Zohar, told Channel One Television: "This is not a political letter...we spoke of the phenomena of occupation which corrupts."

The commandos' letter joined the pilots' letter as the most high-profile acts of defiance by members of the armed forces since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when a tank brigade commander resigned rather than invade Beirut, after saying he saw children through his field glasses.

Some of Israel's top military and political figures served in the Sayeret Matkal, including former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, whose elder brother was killed in the Entebbe rescue operation.

Israeli television stations said it was likely that those signatories still in active service would be dismissed from the unit. The air force removed the nine combat pilots still in active duty after they signed their protest letter in September.

"We must get rid of Arafat" warns Bush - He wants Action Not Speeches !

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...sh_031221103534&e=1

"We must get rid of Arafat" warns Bush - He wants Action Not Speeches !
December 21, 2003

US President George W. Bush told an Israeli journalist that "we must get rid of" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Bush's comments came in a brief exchange with the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot's correspondent during a Christmas drinks party in Washington.

Israel's security cabinet approved Arafat's "removal" in September, with one minister even suggesting that he could be assassinated, but Washington warned Israel not to attempt to expel him. Bush was non-commital about Sharon's speech, saying that he would wait to see what happened on the ground. "Speeches are good things, but they are words. I am waiting for action," he was quoted as saying. Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who is the Bloodthirsty of them all ...

Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...27?language=printer

Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 28, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 -- The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated.

Plans to privatize state-owned businesses -- a key part of a larger Bush administration goal to replace the socialist economy of deposed president Saddam Hussein with a free-market system -- have been dropped over the past few months. So too has a demand that Iraqis write a constitution before a transfer of sovereignty.

With the administration's plans tempered by time and threat, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty to a provisional government.

"There's no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq's reconstruction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, everyone's attention is focused [on] doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer."

The new approach, U.S. diplomats said, calls into question the prospects for initiatives touted by conservative strategists to fashion Iraq into a secular, pluralistic, market-driven nation. While the diplomats maintain those goals are still attainable, the senior official said, "ideology has become subordinate to the schedule."

"The Americans are coming to understand that they cannot change everything they want to change in Iraq," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim political party that is cooperating with the U.S. occupation authority. "They need to let the Iraqi people decide the big issues."

Bremer's plan for Iraqis to write a constitution before he departed had been intended to prevent extremists from dominating the drafting process. U.S. officials acknowledge that risk exists, but said it had been outweighed by the need to end the civil occupation by the summer. The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq will go on longer, military officials have said.

With goodwill toward Americans ebbing fast, Bremer and his lieutenants have also concluded that it does not make sense to cause new social disruptions or antagonize Iraqis allied with the United States. Selling off state-owned factories would lead to thousands of layoffs, which could prompt labor unrest in a country where 60 percent of the population is already unemployed.
Food Rationing System



An unwillingness to assume other risks has also scuttled, at least temporarily, plans to overhaul a national food rationing program that was a cornerstone of Hussein's welfare state. Several senior officials want to replace monthly handouts of flour, cooking oil, beans and other staples -- received by more than 90 percent of Iraqis -- with a cash payment of about $15. Although the proposal has the enthusiastic support of economic conservatives in the occupation authority, concerns about the logistics have put the effort on hold.

"It's a great idea that the academics thought up, but it wasn't in tune with the political realities," said a U.S. official familiar with discussions of the issue. "We have to look at what we gain versus what we risk. Right now, we don't need to be adding any more challenges to those we already have."

A similar philosophy extends to the disarmament of various militias backed by political groups. Although the occupation authority wanted to quickly disband the Kurdish pesh merga militias by moving members into the new army and police force, U.S. officials have not pressed the issue with Kurdish leaders, who remain strong supporters of the American occupation. U.S. officials are also taking a measured approach toward a Shiite militia whose sponsoring party is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

At the same time, the occupation authority has substantially decreased the number of new recruits it intends to put through a three-month boot camp designed to build an improved, professionally trained army. Instead, the occupation authority is increasing the ranks of police officers and civil defense troops, who can be deployed faster but receive far less training and screening than the soldiers.

Bremer also recently allowed the creation of a new force, comprising former members of five political party militias, to pursue insurgents with American training and support.

"The Americans promised to limit our security forces to a professional army and a professional police," said Ghazi Yawar, a member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. "They should not tolerate these militias. They should be dissolving them."

Yawar and his fellow Sunni Muslims, a minority that had long ruled Iraq, are concerned that Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of the population, and Kurds, who have lived autonomously for 12 years, will have little incentive to demobilize their militias after the occupation.

"The Americans have to deal with this issue," he said. "It would be irresponsible to leave it up to the Iraqis."

Across Iraq, efforts are underway to rebuild after years of war, economic sanctions and gross mismanagement by Hussein's government. Hundreds of schools have been refurbished with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Extensive rehabilitation and expansion of the country's electrical, water and sewage systems are slated to begin next year, paid for by an $18 billion U.S. aid package. "We are going to see a massive reconstruction program that will further demonstrate the depth of American commitment to Iraq," Bremer said in a recent interview.

But there has also been a noticeable dampening of some early ambitions to remake Iraq. In June, as he returned to Baghdad aboard a U.S. military transport plane after speaking at an international economic conference, Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold. "We have to move forward quickly with this effort," he said. "Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands is essential for Iraq's economic recovery."

Asked recently about privatization, he said it was an issue "for a sovereign Iraqi government to address."

The administration's decision to shift privatization and the drafting of a constitution to the provisional government has been generally well received by Iraqi political leaders, who want to deal with those subjects themselves. But a small, quiet minority of political figures, including a few members of the Governing Council, contend that aggressive market-oriented policies must be enacted by the occupation authority. The provisional government, they fear, will not be willing to assume the risk of revamping the ration system or shutting down a factory with thousands of workers.

"The Americans are the only ones who can implement these changes," one of the council's 25 members said. "If they leave it up to Iraqis, it will never get done."

Bremer and his aides voiced similar concerns until Nov. 15, when he agreed to abandon his insistence that a constitution be written before a transfer of sovereignty. A few weeks before the new arrangement was announced, a top American official here stated that requiring the drafting of a "constitution before sovereignty is the only way to guarantee we'll get a constitution."

By handing over sovereignty first, the administration has ceded veto power over the final document and is forcing Iraqis to confront a raft of contentious issues, from Kurdish demands for autonomy to Shiite demands for Islamic law, without a referee. In September, Bremer warned that electing a government without a constitution "invites confusion and eventual abuse."

Under the Nov. 15 agreement, Iraqi political leaders are to draft a "basic law" that will serve as an interim constitution until a permanent one is written. Bremer has said that the basic law will include a bill of rights, recognition of an independent judiciary and other "guarantees that were not in Saddam's constitution." His aides contend that discussions about federalism and the relationship between religion and government that will occur during the writing of the basic law will ease the process of drafting a permanent constitution, but other American officials are more skeptical.

"We're requiring a country that lacks a democratic tradition and the institutions of civil society, but has plenty of ethnic and religious tension, to sort out a lot of very challenging things," the senior American official said. "It's not ideal, but what choice do we have? Nobody wants us to extend our stay here."

Privatization, the official said, illustrates the dilemma well: It is a step that needs to be taken -- and that Bremer wanted to take -- but it has been deemed too difficult and dangerous to accomplish now.
Reversal on Oil Factory



With a bloated workforce, decrepit factories and goods that cannot compete with imports, the State Company for Vegetable Oils is the sort of government-run business that economists working for the occupation authority had wanted to shove into the private sector as soon as possible.

One of 48 companies owned by the Ministry of Industry, the enterprise was a flagship of Hussein's socialist economy. Its six factories produced consumer goods -- from partially hydrogenated cooking oil to shampoo and detergent -- that filled the domestic market and were cheaper than imported products.

Although the company posted impressive profits, they were illusory. The government subsidized imports of raw materials, charging the company only $1 for each $6,000 worth of materials brought in.

American experts who examined the company over the summer believed it would be foolish for Iraq's new government to continue the subsidies. What was needed, they concluded, was a private owner who would buy raw materials and sell finished products at market prices. In exchange for investing in new manufacturing equipment and modernizing the product line to better compete with imports, they decided the new owner should have the right to shut down older factories and reduce the number of employees to bring costs under control.

In late June, Bremer outlined his vision for a free-market Iraq before hundreds of business executives attending a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan.

"Markets allocate resources much more efficiently than politicians," Bremer said. "So our strategic goal in the months ahead is to set in motion policies which will have the effect of reallocating people and resources from state enterprises to more productive private firms."

The vegetable oil company's director at the time, Faez Ghani Aziz, agreed with Bremer. "We need outside investors," he said shortly after the speech. "We cannot continue like this."

Bremer's chief economic adviser over the summer, Peter McPherson, advocated a speedy move toward privatization, citing studies of the economic transformations in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. "This needs to be done quickly," McPherson, president of Michigan State University, said in July. "Experience shows us that the faster you do it, the more beneficial it is for the economy."

But as resistance attacks grew more intense, security worries quickly trumped economic ambitions in Bremer's office. No one wanted to do anything that would increase the number of jobless Iraqis who might be recruited to fight the occupation. Practical concerns also surfaced: The closure of Baghdad's airport to commercial flights meant few investors could travel to Iraq.

Iraqi officials expressed further doubts about fast privatization. They argued that waiting for a year or two for Iraq to stabilize would increase the prices at which the government could sell factories. They also raised fears that former Baathists would use ill-gotten money to buy up state firms.

In late July, the debate took a grim turn. After refusing to rehire dozens of workers who had been dismissed before the war, Aziz, the director of the vegetable oil company, was gunned down on his way to work. His killing sent a wave of panic through the Ministry of Industry. All of a sudden, no one wanted to talk about privatization.

Faced with growing reluctance among officials at the ministry and on the Governing Council, Bremer and his advisers stopped advocating a fast sell-off of state firms. "It's just disappeared from the agenda," an official with the occupation authority said. "It was just too risky."

The Ministry of Industry recently decided to lease 35 factories to Iraqi and foreign investors on the condition that they not fire a single employee. "The Americans first thought with the easy change of regime in Iraq there should be parallel drastic decisions on the economic front," said Mehdi Hafedh, Iraq's interim minister of planning. "But now they realize they cannot be too aggressive."

Blair under fire from top clergy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3353387.stm

Blair under fire from top clergy
December 29, 2003

Tony Blair has been criticised by two Church of England leaders for his handling of the war in Iraq. Dr David Hope, the Archbishop of York, questioned the legitimacy of the war and warned that the prime minister would have to answer in the end to God. And the Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, called Mr Blair a "vigilante".

The criticism comes a day after the US official running Iraq contradicted Mr Blair's claim the country had labs for developing weapons of mass destruction.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said it was time for the government to admit it had been wrong about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Dr Hope, Britain's second most senior church leader, criticised Mr Blair for not listening to opponents during the war in Iraq.

In an interview in the Times, he said: "We still have not found any weapons of mass destruction anywhere.

"Are we likely to find any? Does that alter the view as to whether we really ought to have mounted the invasion or not?

"Undoubtedly a very wicked leader has been removed but there are wicked leaders in other parts of the world."

'Not credible'

Dr Wright said he did not think Mr Blair and US President George W Bush had the credibility to deal with the problems in Iraq. "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug-dealing," he told the Independent.

"This is not to deny there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal with it."

Mr Blair has staunchly defended his decision to go to war and said he was "ready to meet my maker". I sure hope that the time of your meeting is rapidly advanced.

Dr Hope warned him: "There is a higher authority before whom one day we all have to give an account."

Mr Cook warned Mr Blair he might never win back public trust after the Iraq war.

On Sunday, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, appeared to contradict a statement made by Mr Blair that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed "massive evidence" of clandestine labs. It was not true, said Mr Bremer, and it sounded like a "red herring" made up by someone to upset the rebuilding effort.

'Undignified'

Mr Cook said the ISG report had only reported laboratories which were suitable for chemical research. The prime minister had tried to turn that "innocuous" finding into a threat when everyone in Britain could see Saddam Hussein had not had weapons of mass destruction, he argued. "It really is time that the prime minister accepted that himself," Mr Cook told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It is undignified for the prime minister to continue to insist he was right when everyone can see he was wrong," he added.

On Sunday, Downing Street was standing by the prime minister's comments, which they said referred to "already published material" in an interim report by the Iraq Survey Group.

Judge rules US troops were 'guinea pigs' for anthrax jabs

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/23/1071941731382.html

Judge rules US troops were 'guinea pigs' for anthrax jabs
By Esther Schrader
December 24, 2003

The Pentagon has suspended compulsory vaccination of US troops against anthrax after a federal court judge ordered the military to stop treating its personnel like "guinea pigs".

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the mandatory inoculations, administered to more than 900,000 troops, violated a law passed in 1998 prohibiting the use of experimental drugs on troops.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which represented the military in the case, said the Pentagon would instruct medical personnel at US military facilities around the world to temporarily halt the vaccinations while it reviews the ruling.

Earlier this year 52 Australian troops were flown home from the Persian Gulf after they refused to have the vaccine because they were concerned about possible side-effects. This was despite the vaccination being voluntary for Australian forces.

Lawyers representing US soldiers say the shots have sickened hundreds and caused a handful of deaths.

In his 33-page judgement, Judge Sullivan ruled that the anthrax vaccinations vio-lated a law passed by Congress in the wake of concern that similar inoculations may have led to illness among veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.

Australia's Opposition defence spokesman, Chris Evans, said yesterday the Defence Force should review its policy in light of the US judgement.

Defence Minister Robert Hill and the Defence Department would not comment.

Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James said the vaccine was "a reasonably dangerous injection". But he said the issue was almost irrelevant with Saddam Hussein's capture. "The most likely user of anthrax... was the regime of Saddam Hussein. That regime no longer exists, so the threat's gone," Mr James said.

Rehnquist Nails Congress on Judge Limits

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid...entencing&printer=1

Rehnquist Nails Congress on Judge Limits
By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer
January 01, 2003

WASHINGTON - Congress should have sought the judiciary's advice before limiting the ability of judges to impose lighter sentences than specified in federal guidelines, the nation's top judge says. "During the last year, it seems that the traditional interchange between the Congress and the Judiciary broke down when Congress enacted what is known as the Protect Act, making some rather dramatic changes to the laws governing the federal sentencing process," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote Thursday in his annual report on the state of the judiciary.

Prior to the new law, prosecutors had long complained that judges had too much leeway in imposing sentences. Supporters of the measure argue that it was needed to ensure fair and equal sentencing justice throughout the judiciary. House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said too often judges were handing down sentences less than those specified in federal guidelines.

The Judicial Conference of the United States ? a 27-judge body that sets policy for federal trial judges, appeals judges and others ? voted in September to support overturning the law.

The changes that Rehnquist objects to were tucked into an anti-crime bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in April. It targeted child kidnappers, molesters and pornographers and included a national Amber Alert network. But it also included a provision sponsored by Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., and supported by Attorney General John Ashcroft, that reduced federal judges' discretion in sentencing criminals, and required reports to Congress on any judge who departs from sentencing guidelines. Collecting this information on judges, Rehnquist said, is "troubling." He said cataloguing such data "could appear to be an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties." Other critics say it could lead to a "black list" of judges deemed soft on crime.

In the report, the chief judge lectured Congress on the importance of a strong working relationship between the judicial and legislative branches, and he cited historical examples in which the two arms of government consulted on drafting laws. He complained that the measure changing judges' sentencing authority was enacted "without any consideration of the views of the judiciary." He added, "It surely improves the legislative process at least to ask the judiciary its views on such a significant piece of legislation." If they did their own for getting the War in iraq, why would they be different when the turn on their own.

Mary Cheh, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, said Rehnquist has a legitimate complaint. Congress adopted "rules and procedures that really are quite unacceptable as far as the judges go because it so restricts their discretion and so straightjackets the process that it really has caused a lot of consternation," she said. The new law means "the sentencing process is even more removed from the judge ... and placed more heavily in the hands of prosecutors."

"The Feeney amendment seeks to correct these sentencing disparities so that one person doesn't receive a sentence three times as long as another person committing the same crime," Sensenbrenner said in a statement responding to Rehnquist's report. Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and other Democrats have introduced legislation that would nullify the Feeney amendment. Calls to Feeney's offices in Washington and Florida were not returned Wednesday.

New Willie Nelson Song Condemns War in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...=/nm/iraq_nelson_dc


New Willie Nelson Song Condemns War in Iraq
December 31, 2003

Country music icon Willie Nelson has written a Christmas song with an edge -- a protest against the war in Iraq that he hopes will stir passions in those who hear it.

Nelson, 70, told Reuters on Wednesday he wrote "Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth" after watching the news on Christmas Day and will play it in Austin, Texas on Saturday at a concert to benefit Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

His rare foray into protest music -- he said it was only the second such song he had written, after the Vietnam-era "Jimmy's Road" -- follows recent political controversies stirred by the Dixie Chicks and Steve Earle.

The Dixie Chicks, one of the biggest acts in country music, had their music boycotted by some country stations after lead singer Natalie Mains said at a concert in London just before the invasion of Iraq that she was embarrassed to be from the same state as President Bush.

Last year Steve Earle sparked the ire of conservatives with his song "John Walker's Blues" about the young American who converted to Islam was captured while fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Nelson said his new song criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and those who thought it unpatriotic to speak out against the war.

The song opens with the line "How much oil is one human life worth?" and swings into the chorus: "Hell they won't lie to me/ Not on my own damn TV/ But how much is a liar's word worth/ And whatever happened to peace on earth?"

"I hope that there is some controversy," said the country singer, who has five nominations in the upcoming Grammy Awards. "If you write something like this and nobody says anything, then you probably haven't struck a nerve.

"I got it out of my system. I was able to say what I was thinking," Nelson said.

David Swanson, a spokesman for the Kucinich campaign, said the candidate was a Willie Nelson fan and the song resonated with themes raised by Kucinich on the stump.

"This is a patriotic song," Swanson said.

Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March saying that Saddam Hussein threatened U.S. security by possessing weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons were found.

Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...st/a36979_2003dec28

US Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting
By Lee Hockstader, Washington Post Staff Writer
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
December 29, 2003

• Chief Warrant Officer Ronald Eagle, an expert on enemy targeting, served 20 years in the military -- 10 years of active duty in the Air Force, another 10 in the West Virginia National Guard. Then he decided enough was enough. He owned a promising new aircraft-maintenance business, and it needed his attention. His retirement date was set for last February.
• Staff Sgt. Justin Fontaine, a generator mechanic, enrolled in the Massachusetts National Guard out of high school and served nearly nine years. In preparation for his exit date last March, he turned in his field gear -- his rucksack and web belt, his uniforms and canteen.
• Staff Sgt. Peter G. Costas, an interrogator in an intelligence unit, joined the Army Reserve in 1991, extended his enlistment in 1999 and then re-upped for three years in 2000. Costas, a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Texas, was due to retire from the reserves in last May.
• According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq (news - web sites), and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?"
  

The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.

"It reflects the fact that the military is too small, which nobody wants to admit," said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist.

To the Pentagon, stop-loss orders are a finger in the dike -- a tool to halt the hemorrhage of personnel, and maximize cohesion and experience, for units in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year.

By prohibiting soldiers and officers from leaving the service at retirement or the expiration of their contracts, military leaders have breached the Army's manpower limit of 480,000 troops, a ceiling set by Congress. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) last month, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, disclosed that the number of active-duty soldiers has crept over the congressionally authorized maximum by 20,000 and now registered 500,000 as a result of stop-loss orders. Several lawmakers questioned the legality of exceeding the limit by so much.

"Our goal is, we want to have units that are stabilized all the way down from the lowest squad up through the headquarters elements," said Brig. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, director of enlisted personnel management in the Army's Human Resources Command. "Stop-loss allows us to do that. When a unit deploys, it deploys, trains and does its missions with the same soldiers."

In a recent profile of an Army infantry battalion deployed in Kuwait and on its way to Iraq, the commander, Lt. Col. Karl Reed, told the Army Times he could have lost a quarter of his unit in the coming year had it not been for the stop-loss order. "And that means a new 25 percent," Reed told the Army Times. "I would have had to train them and prepare them to go on the line. Given where we are, it will be a 24-hour combat operation; therefore it's very difficult to bring new folks in and integrate them."

To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.

"I'm furious. I'm aggravated. I feel violated. I feel used," said Eagle, 42, the targeting officer, who has just shipped to Iraq with his field artillery unit for what is likely to be a yearlong tour of duty. He had voluntarily postponed his retirement at his commander's request early this year and then suddenly found himself stuck in the service under a stop-loss order this fall. Eagle said he fears his fledgling business in West Virginia may not survive his lengthy absence. His unexpected extension in the Army will slash his annual income by about $45,000, he said. And some members of his family, including his recently widowed sister, whose three teenage sons are close to Eagle, are bitterly opposed to his leaving.

"An enlistment contract has two parties, yet only the government is allowed to violate the contract; I am not," said Costas, 42, who signed an e-mail from Iraq this month "Chained in Iraq," an allusion to the fact that he and his fellow reservists remained in Baghdad after the active-duty unit into which they were transferred last spring went home. He has now been told that he will be home late next June, more than a year after his contractual departure date. "Unfair. I would not say it's a draft per se, but it's clearly a breach of contract. I will not reenlist."

Other soldiers retained by the Army under stop-loss are more resigned than irate, but no less demoralized by what some have come to regard as their involuntary servitude.

"Unfortunately, I signed the dotted line saying I'm going to serve my country," said Fontaine, 27, the mechanic, who said he spent "20 or 30 days" fruitlessly researching legal ways that he could quit the Army when his contractual departure date came up in February. "All I can do is suck it up and take it till I can get out."

The military's interest in halting the depletion of its ranks predates the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. American GIs in World War II were under orders to serve until the fighting was finished, plus six months.

Congress approved the authority for what became known as stop-loss orders after the Vietnam War, responding to concerns that the military had been hamstrung by the out-rotations of seasoned combat soldiers in Indochina. But the authority was not used until the buildup to the Persian Gulf War (news - web sites) in 1990 when Richard B. Cheney, then the secretary of defense, allowed the military services to bar most retirements and prolong enlistments indefinitely.

A flurry of stop-loss orders was issued after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intensifying as the nation prepared for war in Iraq early this year. Some of the orders have applied to soldiers, sailors and airmen in specific skill categories -- military police, for example, and ordnance control specialists, have been in particular demand in Iraq.

Other edicts have been more sweeping, such as the Army's most recent stop-loss order, issued Nov. 13, covering thousands of active-duty soldiers whose units are scheduled for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming months. Because the stop-loss order begins 90 days before deployment and lasts for 90 days after a return home, those troops will be prohibited from retiring or leaving the Army at the expiration of their contracts until the spring of 2005, at the earliest.

The proliferation of stop-loss orders has bred confusion and resentment even as it has helped preserve what the military calls "unit cohesion." In the past two years, the Army alone has announced 11 stop-loss orders -- an average of one every nine or 10 weeks.

Often in the past year, the Army has allowed active-duty soldiers to retire and depart but not Guard and reserve troops, many of whom have chafed at the disparity in policies. Some Guard troops and reservists complain their release dates have been extended several times and they no longer know when they will be allowed to leave.

"We don't ever trust anything we're told," said Chris Walsh of Southington, Conn., whose wife, Jessica, an eighth-grade English teacher, is a military police officer in a National Guard unit in Baghdad. She may end up serving nearly two years beyond her original exit date of July 2002, Chris Walsh said. "We've been disappointed too many times."

For many soldiers who had planned on leaving the military, the sudden change of plans has been jarring.

Jim Montgomery's story is typical. Montgomery, an air-conditioning repairman in western Massachusetts, did a three-year hitch in the Army in the '90s and then signed up for a five-year stint in the National Guard. His exit date was July 31, 2003, after which he planned to devote himself to getting his electrician's license -- and to the baby he and his wife, Donna, expected in November, their first.

"I felt like I'd honored my contract," said Montgomery, 35, a beefy, affable man who holds the rank of specialist E4 in the Guard. "The military had given me some good things -- friendships and the opportunity to take some college courses -- and that's where I wanted to leave it."

The Army had other plans. In March, Montgomery's maintenance unit was sent for training to Fort Drum, N.Y. In April it deployed to Kuwait, and since May it has been stationed in southern Iraq. With each move, it became clearer to Montgomery that his July exit date from the Guard would not materialize. The latest he has heard is that the unit may be coming home in April, but even that is uncertain, he said.

Last month Montgomery rushed home on a medical emergency when Donna had complications in childbirth. She and the baby are fine now, but Montgomery is frustrated by his cloudy future.

"Some guys who are Vietnam vets are with us," he said in an interview at his home in Holland, Mass., shortly before he was to return to his unit in Iraq. "They said even in Vietnam, as difficult as it was there, you knew from the time you hit the ground to the time you returned it was one year -- whereas with this it's really up in the air."

Some military officials have acknowledged that stop-loss is a necessary evil. When the Air Force announced it was imposing a stop-loss rule last spring, an official news bulletin from Air Force Print News noted: "Both the secretary [James G. Roche] and the chief of staff [Gen. John P. Jumper] are acutely aware that the Air Force is an all-volunteer force and that this action, while essential to meeting the service's worldwide obligations, is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of voluntary service."

More frequently, the military response to griping about stop-loss is bluntly unsympathetic. "We're all soldiers. We go where were told," said Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman. "Fair has nothing to do with it."

Call to Attention - US Fatalities View - Row After Row, Photos of the Fallen Turn Loss Into Something Personal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...5072-2003Dec27.html

Call to Attention - US Fatalities View - Row After Row, Photos of the Fallen Turn Loss Into Something Personal
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 28, 2003

Americans are supposed to be squeamish about death, unwilling to face it squarely in their own lives, and resistant to the age-old rituals that remind us of its inevitability and omnipresence. Dying well, for the tidy-minded, means dying peacefully in one's sleep, at a ripe age, without sickness, and with ample provision made for burial. Open caskets are a bit controversial and wearing black is optional; confinement during mourning is virtually nonexistent, and expensive ceremonies of any sort are becoming old-fashioned. For many the rituals of death are simply vulgar. We want our lives turned off like a light.

Yet rituals and remembrance keep coming back at us, newly reconstituted and atavistic at the same time. The odd habit of bringing teddy bears to the site of an accident or the gates of a palace enjoys a vogue, though we rarely see those same bears a week later, after rain and grime have turned them from toy to trash. The candlelight vigil still has currency, from time to time, depending on the weather. And new forms of remembrance, such as the AIDS quilt, break out when needed (although it was eventually overwhelmed by its own scale). All of these recall, if not some actual ritual, a remembrance of ritual, such as the bringing of sacrificial animals to the altar, the lighting of pyres or church candles and the weaving of a funeral shroud.

Newspapers have chosen something between the high school yearbook, the database and the graveyard as a motif for memorializing this war. Periodically, because death in Iraq is no longer really news but must be noted in some form, we collect images of the dead and lay them out in orderly lines, thumbnail "faces of the fallen" above the barest epitaphs, noting the name, the age and perhaps the means of their extinguishing. The Washington Post does so once again today, on Pages A18 and A19, and has kept the list up to date on its Web site (which is searchable).

It seems a studiously neutral way to present the American war dead. Fundamental to the political debate about war is whether too many have died to justify the cause, or not so many as to panic the public or unsettle the resolve for war. So the newspaper graveyard gives a dry, statistical sense of the dead, with apparently little interpretation. We can see that there were good days and bad days, and some very, very bad weeks in November. And that the dead include mostly men, but a few women too, and people of all ages and races.

But despite the neutrality of the presentation, dissonance creeps in. Some of these images are the standard military head shot, flag in the background, hat or cap pulled down tight above the eyes, the mouth set in a rictus of stern determination. But there are more casual images as well, graduation shots, tuxedo-clad young men perhaps en route to the prom, and sunny snapshots. One man is in a woolen cap and coat, dressed for L.L. Bean weather, not the desert; others mug for the camera, setting their faces in stark contrast to the more posed shots that surround them. There is a mix of self-consciousness and blankness, real smiles and forced ones, eyes that glint and eyes that say just take the damn picture.

If every photograph on the page were a standard issue military portrait, it would yield a simple, pleasing, visual consistency; and it would add up to the visual representation of a meaningless statistic. So, intended or not, in this strange assemblage of formal and informal pictures, there is also a tension fundamental to war and loss: Military pictures generally show soldiers with their individuality annihilated, while snapshots capture people with their personalities intact. In war soldiers die, which is to be expected; but soldiers are also people, and when people die it is excruciating. No matter how tiny the image, no matter how thoroughly everything else has been cropped out of the shots, it is surprising how consistently people emerge from these pictures. In these galleries of faces, which it would be easier for all of us to think of as just soldiers, individuality asserts itself.

In a little book about photography called "Camera Lucida," the French critic and author Roland Barthes wrestled with the mystery of why some photographs haunt us and others feel like just so much visual noise. He argued that the vast majority of photographs are functional, belong to basic genera, fill a simple purpose, say something obvious and reveal only broad social meanings: people laughing, soldiers marching, children playing. This "duh" quality of the photograph he called the "studium." But some photographs do the obvious and something more. They prick us. They have what Barthes called a "punctum" that pierces.

Barthes went looking for the punctum in the photographs that moved him. In the case of one image, a handsome young man sitting with his back against a dark wall, his hands manacled together, the punctum was this: "He is dead, and he is going to die." The photograph, taken in 1865, was of a would-be political assassin, facing imminent execution. Barthes stares into the man's eyes and can't get over the uncanny sense that he seems vibrantly alive, but is, through the paradox of photographic time, dead, and "going to die."

That paradox has fascinated people since the beginning of photography, which has maintained an intimate alliance with death throughout its history. In the mid-19th century, when photography was becoming more widely available to middle-class people, it wasn't uncommon to photograph one's dead children, tiny corpses, preserved for the memory in their coffins, and in their Sunday best.

The association continues: In W.G. Sebald's 2001 novel, "Austerlitz," a man slows down an old movie from a Nazi concentration camp until it is a succession of blurry, grainy stills; he thinks he sees an image of his dead mother emerging from a bare quarter section of the frame. We have been querying photographs of the dead since the inception of photography. It's frustrating, fruitless and impossible not to do.

Everything conspires against finding any punctum in photographs like the ones in today's images of the fallen. They are too small. Almost everything personal, but for a smile or the tilt of the head, has been edited out. They're sometimes grainy and, reproduced on newsprint, the images are often thin. They are, in many cases, what Barthes would call pure studium: functional military shots meant to say one thing only, that so and so was a soldier of a certain rank at a certain time. The remarkable thing is that we keep looking for these images to prick us and, despite their formality, their orderliness and the pure statistical neutrality of their layout, they still do.

Barthes was worried that photography would be "tamed," that it would lapse into a dull artiness, or the emptiness of the workaday imagery of magazines and newspapers.

He wanted photographs to continue to pierce, to drive him a bit mad with their frustrating sense of reality being present and elusive at the same time. He needn't have worried. With photography serving its old partner, death, no matter how negligible the images, they still have a sting, especially when the dead are young and need not have died. The thing that is in danger of being tamed isn't photography, it's our reaction to it.

Court Grants Prisoners Access to Lawyers - Court Rules U.S. Military Can't Indefinitely Hold Prisoners Without Access to Lawyers, Courts

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20031218_2320.html

Court Grants Prisoners Access to Lawyers - Court Rules U.S. Military Can't Indefinitely Hold Prisoners Without Access to Lawyers, Courts
Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister contributed from New York.
December 18, 2003

In twin setbacks for the Bush administration's war on terror, federal appeals courts on opposite coasts ruled Thursday that the U.S. military cannot indefinitely hold prisoners without access to lawyers or the American courts.

One ruling favored the 660 "enemy combatants" being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The other involved Jose Padilla, an American who was seized in Chicago in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" and was declared as an enemy combatant.

In Padilla's case, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the former gang member released from military custody within 30 days and, if the government chooses, tried in civilian courts. The White House said the government would appeal and seek a stay of the decision.

In the other case, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base should have access to lawyers and the American court system. It was the first such ruling by a federal appeals court anywhere in the country.

"Even in times of national emergency indeed, particularly in such times it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike," Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in ruling in favor of a Libyan captured in Afghanistan and held in Cuba.

The two rulings highlighted the tensions between national security and civil rights since Sept. 11.

An order by President Bush in November 2001 allows captives to be detained as "enemy combatants" if they are members of al-Qaida, engaged in or aided terrorism, or harbored terrorists. The designation may also be applied if it is "the interest of the United States" to hold an individual during hostilities.

The Justice Department this week said such a classification allows detainees to be held without access to lawyers until U.S. authorities are satisfied they have disclosed everything they know about terrorist operations.

But the New York court ruled 2-1 that Padilla's detention as an enemy combatant was not authorized by Congress and that the Bush administration could not designate him as an enemy combatant without such approval.

Padilla, a convert to Islam, was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The government said he had proposed the bomb plot to Abu Zubaydah, then al-Qaida's top terrorism coordinator.

In ordering his release from military custody, the court said the government was free to transfer Padilla to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges. Padilla could also be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," Circuit Judge Rosemary S. Pooler wrote.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress."

In a dissent, Circuit Judge Richard C. Wesley said that as commander in chief, the president "has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens."

Chris Dunn, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling historic. "It's a repudiation of the Bush administration's attempt to close the federal courts to those accused of terrorism," he said.

The White House said the ruling was inconsistent with the president's constitutional authority as well as with other court rulings.

"The president's most solemn obligation is protecting the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We believe the 2nd Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed."

Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, did not immediately return a call for comment. Newman has battled in court to be able to meet with Padilla; she has not done so since he was designated an enemy combatant the month after his arrest.

Thursday's 2-1 decision out of San Francisco was the first federal appeals court ruling to rebuke the Bush administration's position on the Guantanamo detainees, who have been without charges, some for nearly two years.

The administration maintains that because the 660 men confined there were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial.

But Reinhardt ruled: "We cannot simply accept the government's position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel, regardless of the length or manner of their confinement."

The Supreme Court last month agreed to decide whether the Guantanamo detainees, who were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, should have access to the courts. The justices agreed to hear that case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the prisoners had no right to access to the American legal system.

Reinhardt, who signed the 9th Circuit opinion last year that declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional when recited in public schools, stayed enforcement of the Guantanamo decision pending the outcome of the case already before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it has appointed a military defense lawyer for a terrorism suspect held at Guantanamo. Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen becomes the second Guantanamo prisoner to be given a lawyer. Australian David Hicks got a lawyer earlier this month and recently met with an Australian legal adviser.

Both Hamdan and Hicks are among six Guantanamo prisoners designated by the president as candidates for trials by special military tribunals. Neither Hamdan, Hicks nor the others detained in Cuba have been charged.

Padilla is accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb," which uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials.

Besides Padilla, only two other known people who are being detained in the United States have been designated as enemy combatants since the 2001 terrorist attacks: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan.

Cheney in region for a day of small-game hunting

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03343/249105.stm

Cheney in region for a day of small-game hunting
By Rebekah Scott, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Rebekah Scott can be reached at rscott@post-gazette.com or 724-836-2655.
December 09, 2003

One of Washington's big guns came to Westmoreland County yesterday for a day's shooting at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township.

For the second time in two years, Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at daybreak at Arnold Palmer Airport in Latrobe. Air traffic was halted briefly at about 7 a.m. as Air Force Two landed and Cheney's security detail loaded him and his favorite shotgun into a Humvee and drove up U.S. Route 30 to the exclusive country club.

"All I'm allowed to say is there's a big military plane on the ramp, and it's not the first time I've seen it there," said airport manager Gabe Monzo.

Cheney shot more than 70 ringneck pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks. The birds were plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight to Washington, D.C.

John Smith, law enforcement supervisor for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said he was alerted to Cheney's day-trip. Rolling Rock has a game-raising program worthy of a second-in-command, he said, and unlicensed bird hunting is legal this time of year for guests at private clubs.

Scott Wakefield, a dog handler at the club, said about 500 farm-raised pheasants were released from nets for the morning hunt. The 10-man hunting party that included Cheney shot 417 pheasants. The vice president was set to hunt ducks in the afternoon.

Cheney followed a similar hunting schedule in November 2002, when he last visited the Ligonier Township landmark.

Cheney's Washington staff would not confirm his whereabouts yesterday, saying: "Today is his day off and he can spend it where he likes." Spokesman Kevin Kellems said Cheney is expected back in Washington today for a full day's work.

Southwestern Pennsylvania is a quick flight from Washington, D.C., a good alternative to Cheney's favorite South Dakota hunting ground.

Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees - Justice Department Examines Videos Prison Officials Said Were Destroyed

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...18?language=printer

Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees - Justice Department Examines Videos Prison Officials Said Were Destroyed
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 19, 2003

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.

An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.

The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.

"Some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time," the report said. "We determined that the way these MDC staff members handled some detainees was, in many respects, unprofessional, inappropriate and in violation of BOP policy."

One focus of the report was an American flag T-shirt that hung from a wall at the MDC with the slogan, "These colors don't run." Four corrections employees told investigators that the shirt, which hung in a prisoner receiving area for months, was covered with bloodstains, including some that appeared to have come from detainees being slammed into the wall.

A report issued by Fine in June found "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" at the Brooklyn detention facility's Special Housing Unit, where 84 of the men picked up after the Sept. 11 attacks were held. But investigators said then that firm conclusions on abuse were impossible in many cases because of the lack of videotapes, which prison administrators said at the time had been destroyed.

Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said yesterday that federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and in the department's Civil Rights Division were reviewing the report to determine whether criminal charges were warranted. The Justice Department had previously declined to pursue any prosecutions in the cases.

"We agree with the inspector general that even the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding the attacks, particularly in New York City, where smoke was still rising from the rubble of Ground Zero, is no excuse for abhorrent behavior by Bureau of Prisons personnel," Corallo said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that the alleged misconduct of a few employees detracts from the fine work done by the correctional personnel at MDC and around the nation, who conducted themselves professionally and appropriately."

Bureau of Prisons officials declined to comment, referring all questions to the Justice Department.

Barbara J. Olshansky, deputy legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group that is suing the federal government on behalf of detainees, said the report "is astounding confirmation of what we've alleged all along. This goes into exactly what kind of physical and verbal abuse there was and what the contradictions of the government's position has been. . . . It's clear that there was no provocation at any point, and clear that there was no justification for excessive force at any point."

A federal dragnet after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in the detention of more than 1,200 foreign nationals, including 762 people who were the focus of Fine's original probe. Most were of Arab or South Asian descent and were held on immigration violations under a directive from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft while authorities attempted to determine whether they were connected to the attack or to terrorist groups. None was ever charged with terrorism-related crimes, however.

Many of the incidents of abuse were confirmed when investigators viewed more than 300 videotapes recorded from October to November 2001 that showed detainees being moved around the facility and within their cells, investigators said. Corrections officers who had been interviewed earlier had denied that many of the incidents occurred. MDC Warden Michael Zenk and other officials repeatedly told Fine's investigators that the videotapes had been destroyed as part of a recycling policy, the report said.

The tapes eventually located in August had not been included on inventory sheets provided by the prison and were held in a storage room that also had not been disclosed to investigators, the report said. Many tapes from the period are still missing, and there are unexplained gaps the ones that were found, the report shows.

Many detainees also told investigators that, in the month before the installation of the camera system in October 2001, jail conditions and abuse had been much worse, the report noted. The cameras were installed in part to protect jail officers from unwarranted allegations, Fine said.

"If the camera wasn't on, I would have bashed your face," one detainee was allegedly told by a guard. "The camera is your best friend."

Fine said in an interview that the prison system's failure to turn over all the videotapes "significantly delayed and hindered our investigation," but "we did not find sufficient evidence to prove it was an effort to cover anything up."

He said he remained concerned about allegations of abuse in the weeks before the installation of a video system. "If these incidents are an indication of what was done in front of the camera, what may have occurred without them?" Fine asked. "It's cause for significant concern."

The public version of the report released yesterday does not name individual corrections officers or detainees, but it does describe in detail an unspecified number of violent incidents captured on film or witnessed by guards and law enforcement officials. Several lieutenants and officers interviewed by investigators indicated that they had seen incidents of abuse. One lieutenant told another that "slamming detainees against the wall was all part of being in jail and not to worry about it," the report said.

Another MDC officer said in an affidavit that "there were some lieutenants . . . who would [rein] in an officer for bouncing a detainee against the wall, but there were probably other lieutenants who would let it slide."

During two incidents captured on videotape, the report said, "we observed officers escort detainees down a hall at a brisk pace and ram them into a wall without slowing down before impact." In the numerous "slamming" incidents recorded on tape, the report said, there was no evidence that the detainees had provoked or attacked the guards.

On more than 40 occasions, the report found, MDC staff members recorded detainees' visits with their attorneys using video cameras set up on tripods outside visiting rooms. The tapes routinely captured "significant portions" of conversations between the detainees and legal counsel. In some cases, detainees were instructed not to speak in Arabic or to speak in English because they were being taped.

Such taping is a violation of federal regulations, Fine's investigation found. Prisons rules permit videotaping, but not audiotaping, of attorney visits.

Zenk, the prison warden, told investigators that the cameras were moved farther from the visiting room after an attorney complained in November 2001. But the report says that "as late as February 2002, conversations between detainees and their attorneys are still audible on many of the tapes."

Although the taping "potentially stifled detainees' open and free communications with legal counsel," the report noted that some of the recordings include allegations of physical and verbal abuse that were consistent with the allegations being probed.

The report found two incidents in which inmates were locked in restraints for more than seven hours despite no signs of resistance.

Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/national...nted=print&position=

Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories
By JOHN KIFNER
December 28, 2003

Quang Ngai and Quang Nam are provinces in central Vietnam, between the mountains and the sea. Ken Kerney, William Doyle and Rion Causey tell horrific stories about what they saw and did there as soldiers in 1967.

That spring and fall, American troops conducted operations there to engage the enemy and drive peasants out of villages and into heavily guarded "strategic hamlets." The goal was to deny the Viet Cong support, shelter and food.

The fighting was intense and the results, the former soldiers say, were especially brutal. Villages were bombed, burned and destroyed. As the ground troops swept through, in many cases they gunned down men, women and children, sometimes mutilating bodies ? cutting off ears to wear on necklaces.

They threw hand grenades into dugout shelters, often killing entire families.

"Can you imagine Dodge City without a sheriff?" Mr. Kerney asked. "It's just nuts. You never had a safe zone. It's shoot too quick or get shot. You're scared all the time, you're humping all the time. You're scared. These things happen."

Mr. Doyle said he lost count of the people he killed: "You had to have a strong will to survive. I wanted to live at all costs. That was my primary thing, and I developed it to an instinct."

The two are among a handful of soldiers at the heart of a series of investigative articles by The Toledo Blade that has once again raised questions about the conduct of American troops in Vietnam.

The report, published in October and titled "Rogue G.I.'s Unleashed Wave of Terror in Central Highlands," said that in 1967, an elite unit, a reconnaissance platoon in the 101st Airborne Division, went on a rampage that the newspaper described as "the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War."

"For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians ? in some cases torturing and mutilating them ? in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public," the newspaper said, at other points describing the killing of hundreds of unarmed civilians.

"Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers," The Blade said. "Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed ? their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings."

In 1971, the newspaper said, the Army began a criminal investigation that lasted four and a half years. Ultimately, the investigators forwarded conclusions that 18 men might face charges, but no courts-martial were brought.

In recent telephone interviews with The New York Times, three of the former soldiers quoted by The Blade confirmed that the articles had accurately described their unit's actions.

But they wanted to make another point: that Tiger Force had not been a "rogue" unit. Its members had done only what they were told, and their superiors knew what they were doing.

"The story that I'm not sure is getting out," said Mr. Causey, then a medic with the unit, "is that while they're saying this was a ruthless band ravaging the countryside, we were under orders to do it."

Burning huts and villages, shooting civilians and throwing grenades into protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces throughout Vietnam, they said. That contention is backed up by accounts of journalists, historians and disillusioned troops.

The tactics ? particularly in "free-fire zones," where anyone was regarded as fair game ? arose from the frustrating nature of the guerrilla war and, above all, from the military's reliance on the body count as a measure of success and a reason officers were promoted, according to many accounts.

Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, has been studying government archives and said they were filled with accounts of similar atrocities.

"I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Mr. Turse said by telephone. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."

Yet there were few prosecutions.

Besides the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968, only 36 cases involving possible war crimes from Vietnam went to Army court-martial proceedings, with 20 convictions, according to the Army judge advocate general's office.

Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, an Army spokesman, said the Army had compared the Blade articles with the written record of the earlier investigation and did not intend to reopen the case.

"Absent any new or compelling evidence, there are no plans to reopen the case," Colonel Curry said. "The case is more than 30 years old. Criminal Investigation Command has conducted a lengthy investigation when the allegations surfaced four years after they reportedly occurred."

Guenter Lewy, who cited the Army figures in his 1978 book, "America in Vietnam," wrote that if a soldier killed a civilian, the incident was unlikely to be reported as a war crime: "It was far more likely that the platoon leader, under pressure for body count and not anxious to demonstrate the absence of good fire discipline in his unit, would report the incident as `1 VC suspect shot while evading.' "

Mr. Causey, now a nuclear engineer in California, said: "It wasn't like it was hidden. This was open and public behavior. A lot of guys in the 101st were cutting ears. It was a unique time period."

Mr. Kerney, now a firefighter in California, agreed that the responsibility went higher.

"I'm talking about the guys with the eagles," he said, referring to the rank insignia of a full colonel. "It was always about the body count. They were saying, `You guys have the green light to do what's right.' "

While Mr. Causey and Mr. Kerney became deeply troubled after they returned from Vietnam, Mr. Doyle, a sergeant who was a section leader in the unit, seemed unrepentant in a long, profanity-laced telephone conversation.

"I've seen atrocities in Vietnam that make Tiger Force look like Sunday school," said Mr. Doyle, who joined the Army at 17 when a judge gave him, a young street gang leader, a chance to escape punishment.

"If you're walking down a jungle trail, those that hesitate die," said Mr. Doyle, who lives in Missouri. "Everybody I killed, I killed to survive. They make Tiger Force out to be an atrocity. Well, that's almost a compliment. Because nobody will understand the evil I've seen."

The American public was shocked in November 1969 when the reporter Seymour M. Hersh broke the news of the My Lai massacre. Years later, it was revealed that a Navy Seal team led by Bob Kerrey, who would go on to become a United States senator and is now president of New School University in New York, had killed 21 women, children and old men during a raid on the village Thanh Phong in 1969.

"My Lai was a shock to everyone except people in Vietnam," recalled Kevin Buckley, who covered the war for Newsweek from 1968 to 1972 and reported on an operation called Speedy Express, in which nearly 11,000 were killed but only 748 weapons were recovered.

At his court-martial in the My Lai massacre, Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the only person convicted in the case, said: "I felt then ? and I still do ? that I acted as directed, I carried out my orders, and I did not feel wrong in doing so." He was paroled in 1975 after serving three and a half years under house arrest.

In spring 1971, embittered veterans demonstrated against the war in Washington, many throwing away their medals.

One of their leaders, John Kerry, then a recently discharged Navy officer, now a senator and presidential candidate, delivered an impassioned speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

American troops in Vietnam, he said, had "raped, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Mr. Kerry's account came from his own experience, as well as from a three-day conference of the fledgling Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At the conference, he said, "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

A transcript of that meeting makes for hair-raising reading. The returned troops told of the slaughter of civilians; "reconnaissance by fire," or soldiers shooting blindly; "harassment and interdiction fire," with artillery being used to shell villages; captives thrown from helicopters; severed ears drying in the sun or being swapped for beers; and "Zippo inspections" of cigarette lighters in preparation for burning villages.

There is no shortage of literature on atrocities in Vietnam. Books include Jonathan Schell's "The Military Half," which recounts the campaign in 1967 in which Tiger Force took part; Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War," a bitter memoir of his experience as a young Marine officer that is now required reading in a military history course at West Point; and Michael Herr's "Dispatches," which captured the madness from a "grunt's" point of view.

David H. Hackworth, a retired colonel and much-decorated veteran of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam who later became a journalist and author, said that he created the Tiger Force unit in 1965 to fight guerrillas using guerrilla tactics. Mr. Hackworth was not in command of the unit during the period covered by the Blade articles because he had rotated out of Vietnam.

"Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go," Mr. Hackworth said in a recent telephone interview. "It was that kind of war, a frontless war of great frustration. There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by the numbers of bodies you counted."

Thurmond Family Struggles With Difficult Truth - Racist Senator banged His Maid and Had a Mixed Race Daughter

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/national...nted=print&position=

Thurmond Family Struggles With Difficult Truth - Racist Senator banged His Maid and Had a Mixed Race Daughter
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
December 20, 2003

COLUMBIA, S.C., Dec. 19 ? After Essie Mae Washington-Williams told the world this week that she was Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter, she walked away "completely free" of a burden she had borne privately for decades.

Now members of Mr. Thurmond's sprawling family, a well-connected dynasty in South Carolina, say they are the ones struggling.

The sudden, very public arrival of Ms. Washington-Williams to the family has stirred a mix of frustration, curiosity, discomfort and shame, several relatives of the late Mr. Thurmond said today, speaking about the news for the first time.

Mary T. Thompkins Freeman, a niece of the late senator, who died at 100 in June, said Ms. Washington-Williams's announcement "was like a blight on the family."

Like others, Ms. Freeman heard rumors for years that her uncle, a legendary politician in the South who rose to fame as a fiery segregationist, had fathered a child with a black maid. But she never had to confront the truth, not like this.

"I went to a church meeting the other day and all these people came up to me and you could tell they didn't know what to say," Ms. Freeman said. "For the first time in my life, I felt shame."

Ms. Freeman also said that had the secret daughter been white, "it would be a whole other situation," because public criticism would not have been as harsh.

"Strom rose to such stature, you just wonder how in the world this could have gone on," said Ms. Freeman, 64, a retired teacher in Lugoff, S.C. "My family always had help around the house. But it just seems Strom would have been above that."

James Bishop, a nephew, said the publicity had been "embarrassing and awkward." "The man's dead, and he can't speak for himself," said Mr. Bishop, 59, a horticulturist in Marietta, Ga. "I don't know why this lady is doing this."

Mr. Bishop's daughter, Robyn Bishop, 25, an interior designer in Washington, said the worst part was the jokes on late-night television. "It's been really hard this week," said Ms. Bishop, who once worked as a Senate page for Mr. Thurmond. "You have to turn on the TV and there are jokes about him and you're still grieving. I just hope this woman is coming out for the right reasons."

Ms. Washington-Williams, a 78-year-old retired teacher living in Los Angeles, said she finally broke her silence because she wanted her children to know the truth.

On Friday, when asked what she thought of relatives who were embarrassed by her, Ms. Washington-Williams said, "Well, that's just too bad. We'll pray for them."

Barry Bishop, 57, a plastic surgeon in Greenville, S.C., and the son of one of Strom Thurmond's twin sisters, said he was upset by the way the truth came out. "For something to be done so publicly and with all the media circus, well, we're just not comfortable dealing with things in that way," Dr. Bishop said. "There should have been a private conversation and a meeting."

Still, he praised the way Ms. Washington-Williams has handled herself, especially when asked about her father. Ms. Washington-Williams said he "was not a racist in his heart."

"She defended him and that gives us all a warm feeling," Dr. Bishop said.

Ellen Senter, a niece of Mr. Thurmond, also praised Ms. Washington-Williams' handling of her announcement after remaining silent for so long.

"Essie Mae Washington-Williams's humble spirit and kind nature has made it easier for us to bear this news," said Ms. Senter, 58, a teacher in Columbia. "But it was hard when I first heard it because it was surprising to me that my uncle had any sort of illegitimate child, black or white."

The Thurmond family, a network across South Carolina of well-placed lawyers, doctors and public officials, say the announcement will not taint the image of their beloved patriarch. And several family members acknowledged that how they deal with the news will affect not only Mr. Thurmond's legacy, but also the political prospects of his descendants, several family members said.

"The Thurmonds are the closest thing we got to royalty," said Lee Bandy, a longtime columnist for The State newspaper.

The stakes seem highest for Mr. Thurmond's eldest son and namesake, J. Strom Thurmond Jr., 31, the United States attorney for South Carolina who is thought to aspire to higher office.

On Monday, two days after the news broke about Ms. Washington-Williams, Mr. Thurmond issued a statement for the family acknowledging her "claim to her heritage" and indicating he would like to meet her.

Ms. Washington-Williams said she had met with some members of the family this week, but she declined to say who because they asked her not to disclose their identities.

Mr. Thurmond Jr. did not return calls. Some people have praised his quick response; others say he had no choice.

"It's what they had to do," said Congressman James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina. "She had DNA proof. Even so, I applaud them. But mostly I applaud their attorney. The statement he put together was a work of artful vagueness."

The Thurmonds' lawyer, J. Mark Taylor of Columbia, did not return several phone calls.

Ms. Freeman said she had talked to family members who said the younger Mr. Thurmond and Mr. Taylor had "worked very carefully on that statement, thinking of the road ahead."

Mr. Thurmond Jr., known as Lil' Strom and Stromboli, has a reputation as a dogged worker determined to prove himself as his own man. He once took a summer job at an ecology laboratory cleaning out duck cages. But in 2001, he was appointed to the post of United States attorney despite complaints of nepotism and the fact that he had only three years of legal experience.

This week, family members said he had stepped up to be the voice of the Thurmond family because he was the namesake and the eldest of the children Mr. Thurmond raised, not including Ms. Washington-Williams. The senator married twice, both times to beauty queens, and fathered four children when he was in his 60's and 70's.

Political observers say that for the Thurmond family, this moment, however painful, has turned into an opportunity. "I think Strom Jr. has scored points, especially in the black community, because he's not sweeping this family issue under the carpet," said Donald P. Aiesi, a professor of political science at Furman University in Greenville.

"He's well positioned now to do whatever he wants," Professor Aiesi said. "And most people knew about Strom's other daughter anyway."

For decades, rumors swirled in South Carolina that Mr. Thurmond, who had once declared that "all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes," had fathered a mixed-race child with a teenage black maid when he was 22.

Ms. Freeman said she was not sure if she was ready to meet Ms. Washington-Williams, who has said she wants to connect with as many members of the family as possible.

"If I do, I'm not going to go with open arms," Ms. Freeman said. "It's too much to accept right now."

But, she added, "there's no doubt about the family resemblance."

Art and Grace, When It's Time to Say Goodbye - GottaGo Now ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/health/3...nted=print&position=


Art and Grace, When It's Time to Say Goodbye - GottaGo Now ...
By JANE E. BRODY
December 30, 2003

The end of life has become an alien experience for those of us living in countries where most people spend their final days in institutional settings. As a result, conversing with people fast approaching the end of life is foreign for many people, who may be reluctant to visit dying friends or relatives because they do not know what to say or do.

There is no better time to learn than now, when more and more people are dying of protracted illnesses in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and, increasingly, at home with hospice care. While physicians may do an excellent job treating potentially curable illnesses, after modern medicine has no further treatment to offer, they often become tongue-tied and may even abandon their patients, leaving the task of emotional support to friends and family.

In his helpful book "I Don't Know What to Say: How to Help and Support Someone Who Is Dying" (Vintage, 1992), Dr. Robert Buckman, a medical oncologist at the University of Toronto, wrote, "One of the biggest problems faced by terminally ill patients is that people won't talk to them, and the feelings of isolation add a great deal to their burden." Talking and listening to a dying person can help relieve the patient's and the visitor's distress, fears and guilt.

Dr. Buckman, who practices at the Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Center, reassures those who are concerned that talking about dying will create new fears and anxieties. "In fact," he says, "the opposite is true: not talking about a fear makes it bigger. Those patients with no one to talk to have a higher incidence of anxiety and depression. Bottled-up feelings may also cause shame. Many people are ashamed of their fears and anxieties."

Keep in mind, too, that dying is a lonely experience. Many people are more afraid of dying alone than they are of death itself. By knowing how to act and what to say when visiting a dying person, you can bring caring and comfort that eases the person's passage over this most momentous threshold.

Patients often take their cues from their visitors. If meaningful discourse is to occur, the visitor has to be a good listener. Take off the coat, try to relax, sit down at eye level with the patient, if possible, and as close as you would to a healthy friend. Remove obstacles that create distance or block eye contact. If touching and kissing were appropriate before the person became ill, they are fine now, too.

If you deliver a monologue about what you are doing or what is happening to mutual friends and relatives, you immediately convey the impression that you are not interested in the patient's concerns. Instead, focus on the patient. Try to determine whether the patient wants to talk and what about, perhaps by saying, "Do you feel like talking?"

You might ask, "How are you feeling today?" or, "What can I get you?" or, "Can I make you more comfortable?"

Offering Encouragement

Let the patient take the lead in talking about difficult topics and deep concerns, and encourage continued conversation by saying something like, "Yes, I understand," or, "Tell me more," or reflecting back to the patient what you heard.

If the patient starts talking about how bad things are or says he knows that he is dying, do not contradict him or change the subject. Instead, you might ask: "How can I help? Are there things you'd like to say or matters that worry you?"

Do not be afraid to say that you do not know what to say and do not become disturbed by lulls in the conversation. Often just being there and staying close says enough.

Avoid giving advice, unless it is asked for. Do not regale the patient with tales of patients you heard about who were saved by a particular doctor or took an alternative remedy and experienced a miraculous cure. If there really were miracles out there, they would be in use at every major medical center. And do not try to compare the patient's experience with that of anyone else.

If there were enjoyable experiences you once shared with the patient, you might reminisce about them, even if it makes you and the patient sad to realize they will never happen again. It is, after all, O.K. to cry when someone you love is dying.

It is also O.K. to laugh, if there are things that you both find amusing. Humor can lighten the patient's emotional and physical burden by putting things in perspective and raising the pain threshold.

Expect Fallout

Dr. Buckman points out that, like those in mourning, people who are dying are likely to pass back and forth through a series of emotional states, including denial, anger and acceptance. Although some patients ? often those who are deeply religious and believe in an afterlife ? readily accept the end of life with grace and equanimity, others may, as Dylan Thomas suggested, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Anger is often the hardest stage to deal with for those close to the patient, for anger is often misplaced. As Dr. Buckman put it, "When somebody in your family or circle is facing a serious illness and death, the anger that she feels might really be directed at the illness; it comes out directed at you because you are the only person around. If you are aware of the fact that the anger isn't meant for you personally, then you might be able to respond in a way different from the typical family-argument style."

If, for example, the patient says, "I feel dreadful, and you're no help," instead of rising to the bait with, "This is no picnic, you know," or even, "I'm doing my best," (which might prompt a reply, "Well, that's not good enough"), you could respond with, "How bad do you feel?" or, "What's bothering you the most?"

You, the future survivor, may also experience anger. You may be angry about the disruption in your life, the anticipated loss of your companion or support system or the seeming unjustness of the illness. In such cases, the patient may become the target of your anger. Because that is of no help to either of you, it is best to find a sympathetic soul who will talk things through with you. By recognizing the cause of your anger, you may be able to dissipate or at least redirect your angry feelings.

Some terminally ill patients remain in denial to their dying day. They may ask repeatedly, "I'm getting better, aren't I?" or "When can I get out of here?"

There is little to be gained by agreeing with such optimistic thoughts or directly refuting them. You might respond with a vague, "Let's hope so," or try gently to redirect the patient's thinking by asking, "What have the doctors told you?" or: "What if you don't get better? Should we make some plans just in case?"

Finally, you may be faced with a patient in despair who has lost all hope. Avoid making promises that cannot be kept, like, "Surely you'll feel better tomorrow." Instead, try to counter despair by reassuring the patients that everything possible will be done to assure their comfort, including relief of pain, and that no matter how bad things get, you will always be there.

Kuwait to Hang Drug Smuggler

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&...107&d=16&m=1&y=2004

Kuwait to Hang Drug Smuggler
Deutsche Presse- Agentur
January 16, 2004
  
KUWAIT CITY, 16 January 2004 ? Kuwait will hang a convicted Pakistani drug dealer in public, a form of punishment not often carried out in the emirate, the Arab Times newspaper reported yesterday.

Fadhl Sherin Sharif will be hanged publicly at a police station in the capital, Kuwait City, under the supervision of Prosecutor General Judge Hamid Al-Othman at a date to be set soon, the paper said citing judicial sources.

Kuwait?s criminal court convicted Sharif of dealing in heroin and was sentenced to death. An appeals court upheld the verdict.

Edited by author 02-03-2004 03:21 PM
Oldest Living Whiz Kid Tells All - Robert McNamara & Bush Parallels

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/arts/25R...=1&pagewanted=print=

Oldest Living Whiz Kid Tells All - Robert McNamara & Bush Parallels
FRANK RICH
January 25, 2004

There has been no more unlikely movie star this season than Robert McNamara, the only living character in Errol Morris's documentary "The Fog of War." The 87-year-old Mr. McNamara ? who, as the Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter pointed out, is a dead ringer for Gollum in "Lord of the Rings" ? has been as surprised as anyone by his new-found audience. "I don't know a damn thing about films and TV," he said when we spoke last weekend. He can't remember the title of the one other movie he saw in the past decade and has "never seen a DVD." He hasn't watched any other film about Vietnam, period, having made a particular point of avoiding those by Oliver Stone.

As secretary of defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Mr. McNamara presided over the most disastrous foreign adventure in American history and refused to speak out against it even after his own private doubts helped fuel L.B.J.'s decision to fire him. Mr. McNamara still lives in Washington, minutes away from the memorial to the 58,000-plus American dead. Are strangers nice when they approach him to talk about the movie? I asked. Yes, he said, but he acknowledged that the sample may be skewed: "People who hate you don't come up to you on the street and say you're a son of a bitch."

Since its release, "The Fog of War" has generated plenty of debate on two fronts. Should Mr. McNamara, who freely admits to making errors about Vietnam but stops well short of outright contrition, rot in hell? The verdicts on his confessions in Mr. Morris's film range from mild praise (he's conceding fallibility, however belatedly) to utter rage (Roger Rosenblatt, on "The NewsHour," likened him to the self-justifying bureaucrats of Treblinka).

The greater debate has been over the degree to which the follies of Vietnam are now being re-enacted in Iraq. Though Mr. Morris started interviewing Mr. McNamara before 9/11 and his film never mentions current events, the implicit parallels between then and now are there for the taking. In the Johnson administration's deceptive hyping of the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a provocation to war, we see the Bush administration's deceptive hyping of the supposedly imminent threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction for the same purpose. In Mr. McNamara's stern warnings against waging war unilaterally and against trying to win the hearts and minds of a foreign land without understanding its culture first, we find historical lessons we didn't heed as we blundered into the escalating chaos of our "postwar" occupation of Iraq.

Such analogies can be pushed only so far, however, and Mr. McNamara refuses to draw them publicly, despite repeated badgering by interviewers like me to do so. But if it is inexact, not to mention wildly premature, to declare that Iraq is Vietnam, it is not too soon to mine a related and pressing resonance of the McNamara story. When President-elect John F. Kennedy appointed Mr. McNamara to his cabinet, he was lionized as the very model, indeed the very shiny new model, of the modern star business executive: famously, the first non-Ford to be president of the Ford Motor Company, the most brilliant of the 10 so-called Whiz Kids whom Ford had recruited en masse from the Air Force brain trust of World War II, and the first M.B.A. from Harvard Business School to ascend so high in government.

As a national role model at the dawn of Camelot, Robert McNamara was Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and, yes, Paul O'Neill before it was cool. He entered the cabinet as an exemplar of "American certitude and conviction" who could use "his rationality with facts" to intimidate bureaucratic dissenters, David Halberstam wrote in "The Best and the Brightest" in 1972, after Mr. McNamara had come to his bad end. Among Mr. McNamara's virtues, Mr. Halberstam wrote, was loyalty ? but "perhaps too much loyalty, the corporate-mentality loyalty to the office instead of to himself."

"The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind's new best-selling exposé of the inner workings of the Bush White House, reads like an as-told-to book by its principal source, Mr. O'Neill, a C.E.O./cabinet officer fired by another Texan wartime president. It casts the former treasury secretary in the same role of protagonist that Mr. McNamara plays in "The Fog of War." When Mr. O'Neill was first appointed, he was hailed for his successful tenure at Alcoa, where, like Mr. McNamara at Ford, he was prized for his humanistic concern with safety as well as his can-do resuscitation of a sinking bottom line. The parallels end there. Whatever one thinks of Mr. O'Neill's White House tenure, he is of footnote stature in American history, if that. And unlike Mr. McNamara, a loyal courtier to presidents to the bitter end and beyond, Mr. O'Neill hardly waited a moment before trashing George W. Bush.

Consistent to a fault, Mr. McNamara doesn't approve of Mr. O'Neill's behavior. "I think it's terrible," he says. "It's wrong for a cabinet officer after he's out to blacken the reputation of the president." He finds it "particularly bad" that Mr. O'Neill has since retreated a bit from his criticisms: "If you're going to do it, don't shift!" But the former treasury secretary's cooperation with Mr. Suskind's book is useful in a way Mr. McNamara might have been had he spoken out when it could have made a difference. (Our involvement in Vietnam lasted another seven years after his seven years in office.) "The Price of Loyalty" is valuable not so much for its few specific headline revelations, or for its gratingly adoring portrait of the naïve and often hapless Mr. O'Neill, as for its atmospheric impressions of a White House where a C.E.O. mentality all too reminiscent of Mr. McNamara's shows signs of poisoning governance.

In the Kennedy administration, Mr. McNamara's background was something of a novelty. The Bush administration boasts more C.E.O.'s in top jobs than any administration in history ? as well as the first president with his own Harvard M.B.A. These résumés were commended by the press when Mr. Bush took office, much as Mr. McNamara's had been 40 years earlier. But what Mr. O'Neill describes in Mr. Suskind's book is not the executive branch of a democratic government so much as an old-school dictatorial corporate monolith where any serious debate, whether about economic or foreign policy, is stifled from the top.

In "The Best and the Brightest," Mr. Halberstam summarizes how Mr. McNamara, his mind already made up on any subject, would run meetings at Ford (and later at the Pentagon): "Despite the appearance of give-and-take, the whole thing would become something of a sham, the classic Harvard Business School approach with loaded dice." The sentence could be grafted as is into Mr. O'Neill's descriptions of the Bush White House meetings in "The Price of Loyalty," where the McNamara-style C.E.O. enforcing his will and quashing debate often seems to be Mr. Cheney, freshly arrived from Halliburton. As Mr. McNamara's wielding of charts, statistics and unassailable rapid-fire logic mowed down internal dissent to Vietnam policy, so a similar intellectual arrogance at the very top of the Bush administration loads the dice for its rush into gaping budget deficits and ill-planned, excessively optimistic scenarios for post-Saddam Iraq.

I asked Mr. McNamara to identify any bad Ford habits that might have led him astray once in public service. He didn't concede much, noting only that he arrived in Washington having no sense of the role of the press in public life ("We had nothing like that in Detroit!") or the possibility that reporters might try (and succeed) in uncovering governmental activities that the administration wanted off the record. This corporate tic is duplicated exponentially in the Bush administration, which is shrouded in secrecy to the point where the public's right to know has been deftly supplanted by the small shareholder's right to receive an unfailingly upbeat annual report.

"The Fog of War" shows where this can lead. We see the vintage clips of Mr. McNamara promoting good news and suppressing the bad as the war turns sour ? a "credibility gap" echoed by this administration's "Mission Accomplished" happy talk after the fall of Saddam. We learn that there was no real White House debate of the domino theory, which as a premise for pre-emptive war in Vietnam was as intellectually suspect as the pre-emptive doctrine the Bush administration has applied selectively to justify its invasion of Iraq. "We were wrong, but we had in our minds a mind-set that led to that action," Mr. McNamara says in "The Fog of War" when he recalls how Vietnam spiraled after the Tonkin incident.

Errol Morris is not a historian or an ideologue but a profound student of the quirks of human nature. As he dramatizes Mr. McNamara's efforts to make sense of his own history, we see that it is the man's vanity, his narcissistic overestimation of his own "skill set" (to use current C.E.O. lingo), that leads him into a mental fog and his government into a quagmire. Such a classic tragic flaw is personal, not political, which is why "The Fog of War" is moving in the end. We see its protagonist inexorably heading toward disaster, in his case taking a country with him, and we are powerless to stop it.

At Ford, Mr. McNamara was eventually succeeded by Lee Iacocca, who more than anyone rehabilitated the image of the corporate star. It wasn't long after Mr. Bush and his C.E.O. team arrived in Washington that that image took its biggest hit in years, thanks to the new corporate whiz kids of the dot-com bubble, "The Smartest Guys in the Room," as the recent book by Fortune magazine's Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind calls Enron's executives. But the economy is up a bit now, and memories in this country are short. The new runaway hit of prime-time television is not "Arrested Development," the well-received sitcom about an incarcerated Enronesque C.E.O. and his family. It is instead "The Apprentice," in which Donald Trump, the first C.E.O. with his own reality show, is glorified for behaving in the imperial manner of Mr. McNamara in his heyday and Mr. Bush in "The Price of Loyalty": his executives speak only to second his motions.

It's all terribly entertaining, and at the very least, the star's hair deserves its own Golden Globe nomination. As a businessman serving his stockholders, Mr. Trump may even be as good as he thinks he is. But imagine him bringing the same management style into government at wartime, and you can picture his boardroom table of underlings nodding in agreement at the idea of donning a uniform for a premature victory jig on an aircraft carrier. That's why "The Apprentice" is, in its own farcical way, a valuable cautionary tale in its own right. Call it a "Fog of War" for dummies.

The Permanent Scars of Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/magazine...nted=print&position=

The Permanent Scars of Iraq
By SARA CORBETT
Sara Corbett is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
February 15, 2004

Robert Shrode can't sleep.

At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams the house. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out the window at the black fields beyond. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby, but now that works against him. Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his b