5 August 2004

US ABUSE COULD BE WAR CRIMES: Red Cross Says Britons May Have a Case
By Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
The Guardian (UK), 5 August 2004
EXCERPT: Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said yesterday. The organisation, which maintains a rigidly neutral stance in public, took the unusual step of voicing its concerns in uncompromising language after the former detainees, known as the Tipton Three, revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody. Their vivid account of the harrowing conditions at the camp, as told to their lawyers and published for the first time in yesterday's Guardian, has reignited the debate about the treatment of prisoners and the British government's role in their questioning and detention. Last night the Red Cross was joined by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which argued that if the allegations were true they indicated systematic abuse, amounting to torture.
SEE ALSO: Editorial: Justice in the Balance (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Families call for immediate freeing of Britons caught in 'Kafka nightmare' (Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
Questioned at Gunpoint, Shackled, Forced to Pose Naked: British Detainees Tell Their Stories of Guantanamo Bay
By Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
The Guardian (UK) 4 August 2004
EXCERPT: Britain and the US last night faced fresh allegations of abuses after a British terror suspect said an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours while an American colleague pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him. The allegation is contained in a new dossier detailing repeated beatings and humiliation suffered by three Britons who were captured in Afghanistan, then held in Guantánamo Bay for two years, before being released in March without charge. Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the "Tipton Three", claims in the 115-page dossier that shortly after his capture in November 2001 he was interviewed in Afghanistan by a British interrogator who said he was from the SAS. Mr Ahmed alleges he was taken by US guards to be interrogated by the British officer in a tent. "One of the US soldiers had a gun to his head and he was told if he moved they would shoot him," the report says. The SAS officer pressed him to admit he had gone to Afghanistan to fight a holy war.

Coalition Forces Holding Children in Iraqi Prisons
Human rights groups demand immediate access to children held as criminals or 'security detainees.'
By Tom Regan
Christian Science Monitor, 4 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Sunday Herald of Scotland reported this week on its own investigation into allegations that more than 100 children, some as young as 10 years-old, are being detained by coalition forces in Iraq under suspicion of "alleged activities targeting the occupying forces." Many of the children are being held in a special wing at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The Herald's story includes allegations that some of the children were abused, tortured, or raped, by coalition and Iraqi soldiers.

Bush Administration Knew They Were Lying About Iraq
Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned before the war that its Iraq claims were weak
By David Sirota and Christy Harvey
In These Times, 3 August 2004
EXCERPT: If desperation is ugly, then Washington, D.C. today is downright hideous. As the 9/11 Commission recently reported, there was “no credible evidence” of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Similarly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. With U.S. casualties mounting in an election year, the White House is grasping at straws to avoid being held accountable for its dishonesty. The whitewash already has started: In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges. But as author Flannery O’Conner noted, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” That means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak. Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions. In short, they knew they were misleading America.

Weapons of Miller's Descriptions
Spoon-fed information about Iraq's WMDs, New York Times reporter Judith Miller authored many stories later found to be misleading or downright false.
By Herbert L. Abrams
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2004
EXCERPT:By June 3, 2003, according to a Harris Poll, 35 percent of Americans believed that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been found in Iraq, while 10 percent were not sure; in October, 30 percent were still persuaded, although six months of searching had failed to uncover any such weapons. How could so many have been convinced in the face of the total absence of evidence? Selected comments from New York Times reporter Judith Miller's dispatches from December 2001 through June 2003 provide part of the answer. Miller, with a special knack for writing what the Pentagon liked to read, was the sole reporter embedded with the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which operated Mobile Exploitation Teams (MET Alpha, MET Bravo) hunting for WMD in Iraq. Her stories, which were widely reprinted or reported in other newspapers, on cable TV, and on talk radio, helped convey the impression to the nation that illicit weapons had been found in Iraq, supposedly validating the decision for war.

Doctors and Torture: Medical Professionals Complicit in Illegal Procedures
By Robert J. Lifton, M.D.
New England Journal of Medicine, 29 July 2004
EXCERPT: There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal. We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the death certificates of prisoners who have been killed by torturers.

New Thinking in an All-Orange World
By Tom Englehardt and Mark LeVine
TomDispatch, 3 August 2004
EXCERPT #1 (Engelhardt): Unfortunately, our media is programmatically like some exceedingly slow, brain-damaged acquaintance. You have this constant urge to stretch out your hand and say, "Here, here, I'll help you along." But you also know that, massive and influential as it may be, on certain crucial matters it is institutionally incapable of learning. I mean, it's almost three years after 9/11 and we know we have an administration that never saw a piece of false intelligence it couldn't run with or accurate intelligence it couldn't mangle or suppress.
EXCERPT #2 (LeVine): It is time for the United States to declare a truce with the Muslim world, and radical Islam in particular. This may sound like a naïve, even defeatist statement in the context of The 9/11 Commission Report's reminder that America remains very much at war with "Islamist terrorism" and the ideas behind it. Yet a truce -- in Arabic, hudna -- rather than an increasingly dangerous "clash of civilizations," is the only way to avoid a long, ultimately catastrophic conflict. And it's up to Europe to be the good broker. Indeed, there is no chance for a halt in the war on terror, or any fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy as long as George Bush is President. Even if John Kerry wins this November, the possibility that he might initiate such a transformation is slim. However, there is one major difference -- at least rhetorically -- between the two possible presidencies: Kerry has made a point of saying that he would "listen" to European allies and strive to build a common approach to combating terrorism.

4 August 2004

3 Iraqi Guardsmen and 6 Americans Killed
By IAN FISHER
NYT, 4 August
EXCERPT: A car bomb exploded Tuesday in the restive city of Baquba, killing at least three Iraqi national guardsmen, as the United States military reported the deaths of six American troops over the last day. The car bomb exploded at about 2:30 p.m. at a checkpoint in Baquba, about 45 miles north of Baghdad and the site of frequent insurgent attacks in recent months. Last week, a powerful car bomb there killed 70 people, many of them lining up outside a police station to join the force. The American military reported in a statement that three guardsmen had died in Tuesday's incident, although the Iraqi Health Ministry reported four dead and six more wounded. Other reports put the death toll as high as six. Four Americans were killed Monday in two incidents that the military did not report until Tuesday. One marine was killed in western Anbar Province, the center of the insurgency in Iraq, "while conducting security and stability operations," a statement said. A second marine died later of wounds suffered in the incident, which was not specified. At 11 p.m. on Monday, two American soldiers were killed when their convoy was hit was a roadside bomb - by far the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq - in Baghdad. Two other American soldiers died in noncombat incidents.

Do People Want to Hurt us Because We're on the Offensive?
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 3 August
EXCERPT: A sound bite from President Bush on Monday strikes me as emblematic of the country's current crisis. He said,

"It is a ridiculous notion to assert that, because the United States is on the offensive, more people want to hurt us," he said. "We’re on the offensive because people do want to hurt us."

Let me try to help Mr. Bush with this problem. The number of persons in the Muslim world who wanted to inflict direct damage on the US homeland in 2000 was tiny. Even within al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri's theory of "hitting the distant enemy before the near" (i.e. striking the US rather than Egypt or Saudi Arabia) was controversial. The Muslim world was largely sympathetic to the US after the 9/11 attacks. Iranians held candlelight vigils, and governments and newspapers condemned terrorism. Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq, however, turned people against the US. The brutal, selfish, exploitative occupation, the vicious siege of Fallujah, the tank battles in front of the shrine of Ali, a vicar of the Prophet, Abu Ghuraib, and other public relations disasters have done their work.

Cheney in charge of taking the oaths?
Iraq to Offer Amnesty, but Killers Not Eligible
By IAN FISHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
NYT, 4 August
EXCERPT: A delayed plan to offer amnesty to Iraqi insurgents moved forward on Tuesday, but objections raised by American officials and Iraqi communal leaders have reduced the amnesty's scope, meaning that those who killed either Americans or Iraqis will not qualify. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih announced that the plan, floated a month ago by the new government, would be passed by the new cabinet in a few days. The final amnesty, he said, will extend only to people who indirectly assisted the insurgency "in the killing," and not, he suggested, to the killers themselves. What that will mean in practice and whether the decision to forgive only one sliver of the insurgency will actually tamp down the violence are not yet clear. The evolution of the law reflects the curious nature of ruling Iraq: there are domestic political considerations to weigh, but the Americans wield influence behind the scenes. Nearly as soon as the idea was announced, leaders from Shiite and Sunni quarters soundly declared their opposition. They insist that those who resist the American occupation are patriots and have no need for official pardon.

Iraq is On Verge of Exploding
Robert Fisk
DemocracyNow! 3 August
EXCERPT: The attack on Sadr's house comes as British reporter Robert Fisk warns that Iraq is on the verge of exploding. In his latest dispatch, Fisk warns that 700 Iraqis died in Baghdad in July marking the deadliest month since the fall of Baghdad. Fisk writes that the U.S.-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad and that the unelected prime minister Iyad Allawi is little more than mayor of Baghdad.

Pakistan Produces the Goods, Again
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times, 4 August
EXCERPT: Security experts close to the corridors of power in Pakistan tell Asia Times Online that as the November presidential elections in the US draw closer, more such dramatic - and timely - arrests can be expected. The announcement of Ghailani's arrest coincided with the Democratic Party's convention in Boston during which John Kerry was confirmed as challenger to President George W Bush. According to the experts, Abizaid met with all top Pakistani officials and discussed plans to broaden the net for the arrest of foreigners in Pakistan from South Waziristan to all of the other six tribal agencies, as well as to the southwestern province of Balochistan. The Pakistan army has launched two major offensives in South Waziristan this year in an attempt to capture foreign militants, managing only to stir resentment from the local tribespeople. Already, though, under intense pressure from the US, Pakistan has handed over as many as 350 suspected al-Qaeda operators into US custody. Most have been low-ranking, but some important names are, according to Asia Times Online contacts, being held in Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) safe houses to be presented at the right moment. The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others - assuming it was in a position to do so - the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror".

Pakistan Allows Taliban to Train, a Detained Fighter Says
By CARLOTTA GALL
NYT, 4 August
EXCERPT: For months Afghan and American officials have complained that even while Pakistan cooperates in the fight against Al Qaeda, militant Islamic groups there are training fighters and sending them into Afghanistan to attack American and Afghan forces. Pakistani officials have rejected the allegations, saying they are unaware of any such training camps. Now the Afghan government has produced a young Pakistani, captured fighting with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan three months ago, whose story would seem to back its complaints about Pakistan. The prisoner, who gave his name as Muhammad Sohail, is a 17-year-old from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, held by the Afghan authorities in Kabul. In an interview in late July, in front of several prison guards, he said Pakistan was allowing militant groups to train and organize insurgents to fight in Afghanistan. Mr. Sohail said he hoped that granting the interview would increase his chances of being freed. Mr. Sohail described his recruitment through his local mosque by a group listed by the United States as having terrorist links, his military training in a camp not far from the capital, Islamabad, and his dispatch with several other Pakistanis to Afghanistan.

3 August 2004

Attack Dogs
TomDispatch, 2 August
(An excellent account of many major news articles that make the Bush led tragedy in Iraq so, so obvious.)
EXCERPT: We like to say that our imperial media is "global"; in Iraq the truth of that is increasingly apparent. Like the rest of us on the planet, the insurgents, Islamists, ex-Baathists and other Iraqi resistors, having been summoned into existence by the "neocon sofa samurai" of the Bush administration, as Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis called them Sunday, now find themselves caught in the sensationalist gears of our media. Even if the Iraqi rebellion didn't call for a constant raising of the stakes against the American occupiers and their Iraqi followers, the media process would. If you cease to raise the stakes, after all, it's those back pages for you. I don't, by the way, have a typical story of an Iraqi casualty at hand, because the dead and wounded of Iraq tend not to get their own individual stories in our press. If enough of them die to create the sort of media-worthy story Dilanian writes about, then there's a headline like the one in the New York Times last Thursday that read, "70 Are Killed By Car Bomber In an Iraqi City." Cumulatively, under "we don't do body counts" -- a quote from former Centcom war commander and now memoirist General Tommy Franks -- the Iraq Body Count website has carefully toted up the corpses in news reports from Iraq. It offers a minimum figure of 11,336 Iraqi "civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq" and a maximum figure of 13,305. This not only doesn't include Iraqi military deaths, which certainly numbered in the thousands, but is a distinctly conservative estimate, relying as it does on what's reported in a world where so many deaths by definition go unreported and -- as Western journalists are increasingly limited to brief, dangerous forays outside of Baghdad or simply outside their hotels in Baghdad -- so much else goes unreported as well. Just recently, according to al-Jazeera, a group of Iraqi "activists and academics," who carried out a "detailed survey" of Iraqi civilian casualties in the fall of 2003, coordinating, they claim, with hospitals and gravediggers, offered the staggering figure of 37,000 civilian deaths -- including 6,103 in bloody Baghdad and 861 in Kirkuk. Eric Margolis, in his latest column in which he compares George Bush to George Armstrong Custer ("…an arrogant, opinionated, headstrong fool who spurned all warnings, boldly and resolutely leading his command to disaster on the Little Big Horn"), quotes a figure of 20,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. Eleven thousand, twenty thousand, thirty-seven thousand -- it's impossible to know. And that's without the military dead (who for some reason seem not to count).

Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 2 August
EXCERPT: Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

The Situation in Iraq Right Now is Not as Bad as the News Media are Portraying It To Be. It's Worse.
By Ken Dilanian
Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 August
Courtesy of TomDispatch
EXCERPT: A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days. Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either. The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television? Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning. These are painful observations for me to make, because in early April, I wrote on this page that the media had been underplaying the good things happening in Iraq, and were missing the potential for a turnaround. I still believe the first part. But when I returned to Iraq in June, I found that the situation had deteriorated so dramatically that a lot of those good things have become irrelevant. As for the turnaround, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Free at last...
Iraq Sunni Figure Arrested by U.S.
UPI in Washington Times, 2 August
EXCERPT: Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. forces arrested the press official of the Committee of Muslim Ulemas, Iraq's highest Sunni religious authority, after participating in a televised debate. The committee's spokesman Mohamed Bashar al-Faidi said Monday that Muthanna al-Dari was seized on his way back home after taking part in a political debate broadcast live on Lebanese satellite television LBC on the upcoming Iraqi National Congress. ...Muthanna al-Dari is the son of Hareth al-Dari, the secretary-general of the Committee of Muslim Ulemas. Ulemas are Muslim theologians and authorities on religious law. The committee announced that it will be boycotting the Iraqi National Congress which is set to convene in mid-August to protest against non-balanced representation of the Iraqi people in the parley. Al-Faidi said Muthanna might have been arrested because of his harsh criticism of the controversial congress.

Muslim Troops No Guarantee for Iraq
By Ehsan Ahrari
Asia Times, 3 August
EXCERPT: Saudi Arabia's recent proposal for the commitment of Muslim troops to Iraq is a classic demonstration of how different actors are maneuvering on this issue for the promotion of their respective vested interests. Even if materialized, the proposal is not likely to bring about the highly desired stability in that troubled country.  Saudi Arabia, through this proposal, is making a desperate attempt to get back in the good grace of the Bush administration, which still maintains that Riyadh is not doing enough to reform its political system. As the Saudi autocrats envisage the issue, reforming their polity - even if it were to be earnestly carried out - will not produce palpable change in the near future. More to the point, the Saudi government has not yet developed an inclination - much less a consensus - for reform.

Afghan Reconstruction Faces 'Increasing Threat'
By Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times, 2 August
EXCERPT: The United States lacks the security forces in Afghanistan to match an "increasing threat" from terrorist insurgents killing civilian workers, and the State Department is not adequately staffing the embassy in the capital of Kabul, says an internal Bush administration memorandum.
The memo, completed in late June and being circulated inside the government, is an assessment of where reconstruction efforts stand nearly three years after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime, which supported al Qaeda.

Vietnam's Shadow Over Abu Ghraib
by Michael Uhl
Antiwar.com, 31 July
EXCERPT: In reading the Abu Ghraib articles Seymour Hersh wrote for the New Yorker in May (here, here, and here), what struck me about the revelations of abuse and torture was the similarity in detail to what I experienced in Vietnam 35 years ago. The one major difference has been the media’s willingness to embrace in 2004 a story that they shunned in 1970, when returning veterans attempted to inform the American public of widespread atrocities, including the routine killing and torture of prisoners, committed by American forces in Southeast Asia.

2 August 2004

At Least 28 Dead, Over 100 Wounded in Iraq Attacks
1 US Soldier Killed
Car Bomb Kills at Least 5 Outside Police Station in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in NYT, 1 August
EXCERPT: Assailants triggered a coordinated series of explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and Mosul during Sunday evening services, killing 11 people and wounding more than 50 in the first major assault on Iraq's Christian minority since the 15-month-old insurgency began. Separate violence beginning the night before killed 24, including an American soldier, and wounded 101. The toll included a suicide car bombing outside a Mosul police station that killed five people and wounded 53, and clashes in Fallujah between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39 others. The unprecedented attacks against Iraq's 750,000-member Christian minority seemed to confirm community members' fears they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. ``What are the Muslims doing? Does this mean that they want us out?'' Brother Louis, a deacon at Our Lady of Salvation, asked as he cried outside the damaged Assyrian Catholic church. ``Those people who commit these awful criminal acts have nothing to do with God. They will go to hell.'' The wave of explosions -- at least four of them car bombings -- began after 6 p.m. as parishioners gathered inside their neighborhood churches for services. The blasts shattered stained-glass windows and sent churchgoers running into the streets, screaming and clutching their bleeding heads.
SEE ALSO:
Twelve Killed as Bombers Attack Christians in Iraq
Coordinated explosions in Baghdad and Mosul add to fears of beleaguered minority
Michael Howard
The Guardian , 2 August
EXCERPT: The worst fears of Iraq's beleaguered Christian minority were realised yesterday when an apparently coordinated wave of car bombs targeted worshippers at Sunday evening prayers in churches in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul. The attacks in Baghdad killed 11 people and injured more than 50, medical officials said. The blasts in Mosul killed one person and injured 11 others. The toll of dead and injured was expected to rise.

The Mask of Altruism Disguising a Colonial War
Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
John Laughland
The Guardian, 2 August
EXCERPT: If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent - as General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed - and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence.

31 July-1 August 2004

 AUDIO LINK   Flashback: A Rare Broadcast of John Kerry's 1971 Speech Against the Vietnam War Before the Senate
DemocracyNow!, 30 July 2004
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the young Vietnam veteran says: "Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war... how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Kerry said in his acceptance speech, "As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war…" Let's hope we have the opportunity to find out.

US Forces, Hit by Raids, Fault Their Iraqi Allies
By Anne Barnard
Boston Globe, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Humvees were speeding through the dark city when a heart-stopping boom brought the convoy lurching to a halt. Red sparks cartwheeled into the sky. The Marines ran through a dust cloud and found four comrades bleeding from a roadside bomb. The bomb, buried outside an Iraqi National Guard headquarters, marked the third time in 10 days that US troops in the capital of the country's most violent province had been attacked under the noses of Iraqi security forces, whose cooperation is crucial to their success. Three days before, on July 21, scores of guerrillas fired rifles and rocket-propelled grenades from rooftops near National Guard buildings, sparking a street battle that drew in more than a battalion of US forces, and that killed 25 insurgents.

Fierce Firefight Between Marines and Insurgents in Fallujah Kills at Least 13 Iraqis, Wounds 14 Others
By Ravi Nessman
AP in Boston Globe, 31 July 2004
EXCERPT: Marines battled Iraqi insurgents for hours in the volatile city of Fallujah, killing at least 13 Iraqis and wounding 14 others in a series of gunfights, mortar barrages and airstrikes, local officials said Friday. The U.S. military said Saturday that 20 militants were killed. A military spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saturday that the fighters were killed during clashes between 7:30 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday. Many of those wounded, including at least one child, appeared to be civilians injured by U.S. airstrikes, hospital officials said. The U.S. military said insurgents started the fighting Thursday night by ambushing a patrol and then fled into buildings to continue the battle. The Marines said they suffered no casualties. In Baghdad late Friday, a loud explosion shook buildings in a downtown area with many hotels housing foreigners. The source of the blast was not immediately clear, and the U.S. military said there was no word on casualties. Iraq has been beset by surging violence in recent weeks, including a wave of kidnappings and a devastating car bombing in Baqouba on Wednesday that killed at least 70 people.

Iran Won't Give Up Uranium Program
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NYT, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: Iran vowed Saturday not to give up its uranium enrichment program and confirmed that it had restarted building centrifuges for that purpose. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Iran had not resumed enriching uranium but had restarted work on centrifuges in response to the failure of Britain, Germany and France to resolve questions over Iran's potential nuclear program infractions in June. "We still continue suspension on uranium enrichment, meaning that we have not resumed enrichment," Mr. Kharrazi said at a news conference Saturday, adding that Iran was not committed to another agreement with Britain, Germany and France on not building centrifuges. Diplomats said this week that Tehran had restarted equipment used to make uranium hexafluoride, which - when injected into centrifuges and spun - can be enriched to low levels to be used as fuel to generate electricity or to higher levels to make nuclear weapons.

But we got'em on the ropes...
Taliban Fighters Increase Attacks
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID ROHDE
NYT, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: Attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Afghan security forces and civilians have increased steadily in the past several months, posing new hurdles for reconstruction and political stability efforts, American commanders and Afghan officials say. Fighting has intensified, particularly in the east along the rugged, 1,500-mile border with Pakistan and in the south near Kandahar. Twenty-three American troops have died from ambushes, land mines and other hostile fire this year, compared with 12 combat deaths in all of 2003, according to military statistics. An increasingly popular weapon may have been inspired by insurgents in Iraq: remote-controlled bombs. The Taliban have stepped up recruiting in the south and intensified strikes against newly trained Afghan soldiers and police officers, as well as foreign-aid workers. This week, the international aid agency Doctors Without Borders said it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years, in part because of the deteriorating security there. The attacks appear to be having the most impact in rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Afghan government is still struggling to establish its authority nearly three years after the Taliban fell. This part of the country has been a traditional stronghold of the Taliban. Reconstruction in some areas has come to a near standstill, and the local population remains hostile to the Americans and the Afghan government. ...American commanders nonetheless paint an optimistic picture, saying the increased attacks are a sign of the Taliban's desperation.

Saudi Plan for Muslim Multinational Force Dead in the Water
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: Iran condemned a plan announced by Saudi Arabia for a Muslim multinational force in Iraq. Even US Secretary of State Colin Powell was lukewarm, saying it needed more study. And the countries mentioned as possible contributors all hastily backed away. Bangladesh said it was out of the question for it to send troops to Iraq except under a United Nations command. My own estimation is that no country in the global South or the Muslim world is going to provide any significant number of troops to an American-led military multinational force. They would have to report to the UN. And, the Bush administration just is not going to give the UN a command in Iraq. So, the Saudi plan is dead in the water.

In Memoir, U.S. General Franks Tells of Gaps in War Plans
By THOM SHANKER
NYT, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: In passages likely to add kindling to the debate over whether sufficient troops were committed to battle in Iraq and to the continuing postwar operations, General Franks writes that several of the evolving campaign concepts written before the war projected a maximum of 250,000 troops at the end of the combat phase and into the postwar mission. General Franks writes of how his swift capture of Baghdad was accomplished with approximately 170,000 conventional ground troops. Among the book's disclosures is that an American military officer pretended to be an agent for Iraqi intelligence, selling Baghdad fake war plans stamped "Polo Step," which was actually the name of General Franks's secret war-planning team. General Franks writes that the officer, code-named April Fool, prompted the Iraqis to believe that the Fourth Infantry Division, afloat at sea after being denied access through Turkey, would instead attack through Jordan. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, was criticized and ostracized by senior Pentagon civilians when, during Senate testimony, he suggested that it might take a force of several hundred thousand troops to pacify Iraq. General Franks writes that he and his staff discussed the postwar phase in Iraq "throughout our planning" for the war itself. He dismisses Ahmad Chalabi, and by extension the intelligence and advice that he and his Iraqi National Congress provided to Washington policy makers, saying Mr. Chalabi was "badly out of touch with what it would take" to stabilize Iraq. He also writes that before the war, Jay Garner, the retired general appointed as the first, short-term director of reconstruction and assistance efforts in Iraq, "had spent weeks walking the corridors of Washington, hat in hand." "He needed people and money," General Franks writes. Within his own command, General Franks writes, "we had neither the money nor a comprehensive set of policy decisions that would provide for every aspect of reconstruction, civic action, and governance." Of his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the general recalls that during the difficult early days of the Afghanistan campaign, tensions ran so high that General Franks offered his resignation.

Charges of Fraud in Iraq Contracts
U.S. authority lost track of millions, auditor reports
T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times via SF Chronical, 30 July 2004
EXCERPT: A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general. The report also says that U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for. The CPA, for example, paid nearly $200,000 for 15 police trucks without confirming they were delivered, and auditors have not located them, the report said. Officials also didn't have records to justify the $24.7 million price tag for replacing the Iraqi currency, which used to carry Saddam Hussein's portrait, the report said. The report is the most sweeping indication yet that some U.S. officials and private contractors repeatedly violated the law in the free-wheeling atmosphere that pervaded the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war- torn country.

Uzbek Blasts Hit U.S. and Israeli Embassies
By Shamil Baigin
Reuters, 30 July 2004
EXCERPT: Suspected suicide bombers struck the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan as well as the state prosecutor's office Friday, killing two local guards at the Israeli mission and wounding nine other people. The coordinated blasts in the capital Tashkent came four days after the authoritarian ex-Soviet state, a U.S. ally in its war on terror, put 15 suspected al Qaeda followers on trial for bomb attacks in March that killed nearly 50 people. A little-known Islamic group claimed responsibility for the blasts, saying they were a protest against injustice and to show solidarity with Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan fighters. U.S. and Israeli officials said the three bombers seemed to approach on foot as business was winding up for the day. "One policeman and one security guard who were guarding the embassies were killed. Nine people were injured. Two of them are in a serious condition," the Uzbek Interior Ministry said. ...The Islamic Jihad Group in Uzbekistan claimed the blasts in a statement on an Islamist Web site. It linked the attacks to the March explosions, for which it also claimed responsibility, saying "the trial of many brothers... was being carried out." "(These attacks) were an answer to the injustice of the apostate government and an expression of support for the jihad (holy war) of our Muslim brothers in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) and other Muslim lands," said the statement, written in Arabic. Islamist radicals have long fought President Islam Karimov's government, and came close to assassinating him five years ago. Uzbekistan's 26 million people are mostly nominally Muslim, although decades of Soviet atheism has made observance patchy.

But Bush will not do what is necessary to make it happen
Saudi Plan for Muslim Force in Iraq Gains in U.S.
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
NYT, 30 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration expressed interest on Thursday in a Saudi proposal to send an all-Muslim security force to Iraq, but foreign policy experts voiced skepticism that the plan would result in substantial contributions of troops. The proposal, made to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell this week during a visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, aims to help stabilize Iraq and lend regional credibility to the interim government in Baghdad. Some members of the coalition in Iraq are considering pulling out, having served through the June 28 transfer of authority to a new government. Ukraine, for example, said Thursday that it had begun talks with the United States and Poland on withdrawing its 1,600 troops. Nations are also under pressure from terrorists in Iraq, which are increasingly using kidnapping and execution as a way to deter cooperation with the Americans and the interim government. Five American allies have withdrawn their troops, including the Philippines, which won the release of a hostage by departing ahead of schedule. One possible contributor to a Muslim force, Pakistan, has engaged in high-level talks with Saudi officials about a role. But Pakistan was rocked by the news on Thursday that Islamist extremists had executed two Pakistani hostages in Iraq. Mr. Powell, in an appearance on Thursday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, called the Saudi proposal "an interesting idea." He suggested that a Muslim force could provide security for facilities or protection for United Nations personnel.
SEE ALSO: Islamic States Discuss Muslim Force for Iraq (Scotsman via BWUSA)

High Qaeda Aide Retracted Claim of Link With Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 30 July 2004
EXCERPT: A senior leader of Al Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan several months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the main source for intelligence, since discredited, that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to members of the organization, according to American intelligence officials. Intelligence officials say the detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle, recanted the claims sometime last year, but not before they had become the basis of statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda that involved poisons, gases and other illicit weapons. Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan in December 2001, is still being held by the Central Intelligence Agency at a secret interrogation center, and American officials say his now-recanted claims raise new questions about the value of the information obtained from such detainees.

Get-Tough Policy on Cuba May Backfire Against Bush
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
NYT, 30 July 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, which has undertaken a number of tough measures against Cuba in this pre-election season, is finding opposition to some of them from large numbers of Cuban-Americans, a group whose electoral support the White House hoped to solidify. Administration officials say their strategy is intended to hasten the end of Fidel Castro's government, provide aid to a transition government and help establish a democratic free-market state. "Our goal is to liberate the Cuban people from the tyranny and from dependency on international charity," Roger F. Noriega, assistant secretary of state, told reporters in May, when the new restrictions were announced. "We want them to control their own destinies, to be free to make choices on how they want to live their lives." But critics say the measures, which were laid out in a policy report from a presidential commission led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, are chiefly intended to add to backing for President Bush among Cuban-Americans, a group White House advisers have acknowledged is central to his re-election strategy. Paradoxically, some of the critics say, several provisions - like a tightening of travel restrictions and a curb on relief packages - may backfire, harming Mr. Bush's chances in Florida, a crucial swing state. ...Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, based in Miami, said the restrictions adopted by the administration amounted to "bad policy and bad politics." Although his longtime anti-Castro organization, the largest exile lobby, supports most provisions in the new strategy, the restrictions on travel and relief packages have changed the focus of debate, he said, away from Mr. Castro's human rights record and the persecution of dissidents. "We succeeded in turning Castro versus the U.S. government into David versus Goliath,'' Mr. Garcia said. "The giant is perceived as being abusive."

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