- Nobel Prize winner I.I. Rabi

First of all, see this because this fine writer says a lot of valid and intelligent things.

~~~

So what�s the deal? Now that we have Iraq under control we�ve set our sights on Syria? Who�s next? Hey, may as well peg off Jordan � they�re just a pesky little country anyway. And you know Egypt has always gotten under our skin�

You just knew I couldn�t keep my mouth shut for too long, didn�t ya?

For me, it all started with Jessica Lynch.

The fact that she had never been listed as a POW (or even claimed as such by the Iraqis and let�s face it � they were claiming every POW they possibly could, including parading all of them around on t.v. in violation of the Geneva Convention, so why wouldn�t they have claimed Jessica Lynch as a POW if she was one?) when she was �rescued� kind of bothered me a little bit. However, I just naturally assumed that I had missed something.

Then her parents started talking to the press and all of a sudden, contrary to previous Pentagon reports, we found out that Jessica had not been stabbed or shot by her captors. It seems her family had been informed of facts completely contrary to what the rest of us had been told up to that point. I wonder if they were really supposed to have let those facts slip out to the media�

At first, I was just elated that little Jessica would soon be safe and on the mend. Yes, I wondered just why she was so completely shielded from the media (to the extent of having soldiers standing as physical shields between her and press cameras as she was being transported), but hey � were I in her position, would I really feel like smiling for the camera only a few days after being �rescued� from a presumably military hospital where I was being held by my enemies in God knows what kind of conditions? I sincerely doubt it. So I didn�t question.

Then came the �rescue� or �turn-over� of the actual seven POWs � you know, all of the seven we had previously reported as POWs. I have no doubt that they were being held as POWs, but hey�wait a minute�they look downright good, relatively speaking. Evidently, they were beaten their first day in captivity, but had since been treated well. This is not at all what I or probably anybody expected, especially after knowing what we know about the Iraqi military and how they torture people.

So my question became�why then was Jessica Lynch treated so horribly (evidently, anyway. I mean, she does have two broken legs, a broken arm, a broken vertebrae, etc.)?

Even though I do not have that answer, the question started me digging in a way I have been avoiding since the first bombs dropped. I have been keeping tabs and hording articles, but first of all I didn�t want to be accused of being �unsupportive of our troops� by keeping such close tabs; more importantly for me, though, I know that we never get the full story during war-time and it�s almost futile to even attempt to do so. Well, plus it�s all just emotionally overwhelming some times. So I�ve been delaying the inevitable.

What I tend to do is horde articles about relevant matters so that, as news develops, I can go back for reference. The internet is a super-wonderful tool for this. It does bring up questions, though, as �facts� appear to change from week-to-week.

Also�It�s an interesting thing when one reads news from countries other than the U.S. (or watches cable news from outlets in other countries). You know, I really don�t want to think my country would use the media as a tool in whitewashing this war and thought manipulation�

From The Daily Camera

Area Surgeon Aids Troops

Boulder man operated on recently rescued POW in Germany

By Lisa Marshall, Camera Staff Writer

April 5, 2003

Friday morning: 57 dead; 16 missing; 7 captured.

The daily White House press briefings and fuzzy real-time TV reports fall far short of conveying the brutality of war, says Boulder neurosurgeon Gene Bolles.

Bolles spent Thursday hunched over an operating table at Germany's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, repairing the broken back of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital this week. The 19-year-old soldier will require aggressive rehabilitation, Bolles said, but is expected to recover well � one success story in a war full of tragedy.

"It really is disgustingly sanitized on television," said Bolles, who has spent the last 16 months as chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl, the destination for the war's most wounded soldiers.

As of Friday, 281 patients had been brought to Landstuhl since Operation Iraqi Freedom started, and plane-loads are arriving regularly.

"We have had a number of really horrific injuries now from the war. They have lost arms, legs, hands, they have been burned, they have had significant brain injuries and peripheral nerve damage. These are young kids that are going to be, in some regards, changed for life. I don't feel that people realize that."

Bolles, 66, had a private practice in Boulder for 32 years before taking the job at Landstuhl. The U.S. military was short on neurosurgeons after Sept. 11, 2001 � having scaled down its medical staff in response to a shrinking troop population in the '90s � and was looking for an experienced civilian doctor willing to work as a contractor for a few years, said Lt. Colonel Bill Monacci, consultant to the Army Surgeon General for neurosurgery.

Bolles, a self-described "pacifist," found his patriotic juices flowing in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, so he postponed his retirement and took the job to help out with Operation Enduring Freedom, the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

"I was looking for any way to help out," said Bolles. "Not to fight a war necessarily, but to help out."

He is one of only a handful of civilian doctors among the mostly military staff at Landstuhl, the largest military hospital outside the United States. Until this week, he was the only neurosurgeon, taking anyone with back, neck, spine or head injuries.

While Monacci said he thinks the number of wounded has been relatively low given the scope of the war, Bolles has handled an increasingly heavy workload exceptionally well, he said. "It is a tough situation. He probably thought it was going to be a bit of a slow-down from his practice, but I imagine it is a little busier than he planned for," Monacci said Bolles said despite media images that may lead the public to believe otherwise, he and the other doctors at Landstuhl have been busy for months.

Before the war began, the hospital already had treated 300 U.S. soldiers from Kuwait and surrounding areas, wounded in car accidents, windstorms and during training exercises. A brutal sandstorm landed five soldiers on Bolles' operating table. The wind blew a tent pole through the skull of one soldier and toppled heavy equipment onto another, fracturing his spine, he said.

Still affected by the carnage he saw as a division flight surgeon during the Vietnam War, Bolles said he is particularly troubled by the injuries he has seen coming from Operation Iraqi Freedom, a war he doesn't necessarily support.

"I am opposed to any war," he said. "I am doing what I am doing because I am a doctor, not because I have a political agenda."

He spent three hours in the operating room one morning last week removing bullet fragments, blood and brain matter from two young soldiers who each had been shot in the head. One will recover nicely, Bolles said; the other will have permanent neurological damage.

Another of his patients, wounded in a grenade battle, died on the operating table.

"These are young children; 18, 19, 20 with arms and legs blown off. That is the reality," said Bolles.

Lt. Col. John Ogle, a Longmont emergency room doctor and flight surgeon for the National Guard, agrees that the public is not always given an accurate count of military injuries. But he says that is because an accurate number is often hard to come by: What exactly constitutes wounded?

"I would not call the war coverage sanitized," he said. "Everybody knows that there are casualties over there, mostly Iraqi. What has not been stressed enough is what it was like in the previous 12 years of Saddam's regime."

As things heat up on the battlefield, Bolles' workload is getting heavier.

Soldiers arrive daily in C-141 transport planes after the eight-hour flight from Iraq: 46 on Friday, 39 today, 38 on Sunday, 25 on Monday.

To brace for the flood of patients, the hospital has doubled its capacity to 322 beds and called up 600 medical reservists, including two more neurosurgeons. Bolles admitted four new patients Friday and was preparing to go back into the emergency room that night.

"The feeling here originally was, this is going to be over in a couple days," Bolles said.

His work is rewarding: He recently received a letter from a soldier who suffered a severe brain injury in a bomb blast in Afghanistan a few months ago. He'd recovered well and is getting married.

Working on the recently rescued Pfc. Lynch, who is not much older than Bolles' own daughter, was particularly rewarding, yet troubling. "Nineteen years old and she's out there carrying a big gun," he said.

His assignment with Landstuhl should expire within a year or two, but Bolles has no plans to retire. Instead, he's looking into signing up with the relief agency Doctors without Borders.

"I could feel just as needed if I were in Iraq taking care of the people there who needed my services," he said.

Copyright 2003, The Daily Camera. All Rights Reserved.

~~~

from the CBC

U.S. planning camp for up to 24,000 Iraqi PoWs

Last Updated Wed, 09 Apr 2003 16:38:04

UMM QASR - Coalition forces are currently holding 7,300 prisoners of war in Iraq.

And they are building a tent city prison camp that could eventually hold up to 24,000 people. The camp will be built near the port city of Umm Qasr in far southern Iraq, officials said. One feature of the planned compound will be an interrogation centre. Not all the current Iraqi prisoners have been identified, and some have misled their captors on the rank they held in hopes of getting better treatment.

American officials in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have had difficulty discovering the true identities of some of the 650 people they've held there for several months. Officials said there were no plans to ship any of the Iraqi prisoners to Guantanamo Bay.

The U.S. refuses to classify the Guantanamo Bay detainees as prisoners of war, although it claims to be treating them as though they were covered by the Geneva Conventions.

Written by CBC News Online staff

~~~

The URL of this article is: here.

Editor's Note: The US News media has not reported this story.

BETHLEHEM, April 01 (Online): The Church of Nativity, widely believed to be the birth-place of Jesus Christ, decided to ban entry each of the US President George Bush, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw the privilege of visiting this sacred place, which is one of the holiest Christian shrines.

The move came in protest of "the aggressive war these leaders have waged against Iraq," top Clergy of the church said.

The Church Parishioner Father Panaritius made the decision public at a massive protest demonstration organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church of Nativity.

"They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever," the parishioner said.

Copyright Qatar News Agency 2003.

Karen�s note: Hey, don�t they know we�re on a mission from God, here? Don�t they know Dubya was �Born Again� a long time ago?

~~~

from The Guardian

Tuesday April 1, 2003

The invasion forces suffered another self-inflicted disaster in the battle for hearts and minds yesterday when soldiers from the US 3rd infantry division shot dead Iraqi seven women and children.

The incident occurred on Route 9, near Najaf, when a car carrying 13 women and children approached a checkpoint.

A US military spokesman says the soldiers motioned the vehicle to stop but their signals were ignored. However, according to the Washington Post, Captain Ronny Johnson, who was in charge of the checkpoint, blamed his own troops for ignoring orders to fire a warning shot.

"You just fucking killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!", he reportedly yelled at them.

In another checkpoint incident this morning, US forces say they killed an unarmed Iraqi driver outside Shatra.

Meanwhile it has emerged - as a result of detective work on the internet by a Guardian reader - that the explosion in a Baghdad market which killed more than 60 people last Friday was indeed caused by a cruise missile and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket as the US has suggested.

A metal fragment found at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings, including "MFR 96214 09". This, our reader pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer's identification number known as a "cage code".

Cage codes can be looked up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil), and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company.

Raytheon, whose headquarters are in Lexington, Massachusetts, aspires "to be the most admired defence (sic) and aerospace systems supplier through world-class people and technology", according to its website (www.raytheon.com). It makes a vast array of military equipment, including the AGM-129 cruise missile which is launched from B-52 bombers.

On the political front, two new quarrels have broken out. One centres on an attempt by the US to set up its own inspection team to find the alleged Iraqi weapons that United Nations inspectors did not find. The US appears unaware that such a project will have little credibility internationally and has pressed ahead, offering jobs to some of the UN inspectors.

The two chief UN inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, are reportedly furious. Dr Baradei, in remarks quoted by the BBC, insisted that the IAEA is the sole body with legal authority to verify any nuclear programmes in Iraq.

The other row concerns the new Pentagon-controlled Iraqi government that the US is establishing in Kuwait, with 23 ministries, each headed by an American and with four US-appointed Iraqi advisers.

Former US general Jay Garner, who was placed in overall charge of the "interim government", is annoyed by the efforts of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence (sic) secretary, to impose several controversial Iraqis as advisers in the government.

They include Ahmed Chalabi, head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, who will be offered an advisory post in the finance ministry. Mr Chalabi was previously convicted in his absence of a multi-million dollar banking fraud in Jordan, though he denies the charges.

Mr. Wolfowitz wants posts in other ministries to go to Mr Chalabi's nephew, Salem, and to three of his close associates, Tamara Daghestani, Goran Talebani and Aras Habib.

In an interview with the BBC yesterday, the British home secretary, David Blunkett, conceded that at present the invasion forces are "seen as villains", but he added:

"Once this is over and there is a free Iraq, with a democratic state ... the population as a whole will say that we want a free country, we want a state to live in where we can use our talents to the full."

The veteran American war correspondent, Peter Arnett, was sacked by NBC television yesterday for giving an interview to an Iraqi TV journalist in which he said the US had "misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces". He was immediately offered a new job by a British newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which opposes the war.

Another war-related tragedy has occurred in Israel, where two elderly sisters were found dead - apparently suffocated - in a room that they had made airtight against a possible Iraqi chemical attack. Three others died in similar circumstances a fortnight ago.

On the ground in Iraq, battles continue in various locations. US forces "testing" the southern defences of Baghdad are reportedly fighting Republican Guards and other forces at Hindiya, some 50 miles from the capital.

Fighting has also erupted along the Euphrates river near ancient Babylon. US marines entered Shatra, 20 miles north of Nassiriya, after storming it with planes, tanks and helicopter gunships, and British Royal Marines clashed with Iraqi paramilitaries south of Basra.

Bombing of Baghdad continued overnight. Targets included the Iraqi national Olympic committee, which is run by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday.

At least one American soldier has been reported killed at Hindiya. A British soldier was also killed yesterday - the 26th since the war began. The defence (sic) ministry said he died "in the course of his duties" but gave no details.

~~~

Uh�SCARY!

Pentagon wants mini-nuke ban to be lifted

Julian Borger in Washington

Friday March 7, 2003

The Guardian

The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes", in one of the most overt steps President George Bush's administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal.

Buried in the defence (sic) department's 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.

It calls on the legislature to "rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons".

If passed by Congress, the measure would represent an important victory for radicals in the administration, who believe the US arsenal needs to be made more "usable", and therefore a more meaningful deterrent, to "rogue states" that have weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads "has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats".

Democrats fought off earlier Republican attempts to lift the ban on researching and developing warheads under five kilotons (a third of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), fearing they would lead to an end to the US moratorium on nuclear testing, and to a new arms race.

Since the Republicans won back control of the Senate last year, the administration believes it is in a strong position to lift the "Spratt-Furse restriction", named after two Democrat congressmen who proposed the ban in 1993.

"It's significant because this is the first time the administration - and it comes from the department of defence (sic)- has said it wants low-yield weapons," said Kathryn Cran dall, a nuclear weapons expert at the British American Security Information Council.

She said the policy statement contradicted denials from administration officials that they had any ambitions to build new weapons.

The Pentagon official, who did not want to be named, said a repeal of the ban would not commit the US to producing and deploying low-yield warheads. "Such warhead concepts could not proceed to full-scale development, much less production and deployment, unless Congress authorizes (sic) the substantial funds required," the official said.

Congressional Republicans approved $15m (�9.4m) last year for research on nuclear "bunker busters", designed to penetrate reinforced underground targets before exploding; but the weapons, the B83 and the B61, are modifications of high-yield bombs. Developing low-yield devices would probably require testing.

The Senate never ratified the comprehensive test ban treaty, but the US imposed a moratorium on testing in 1992.

"Here we have the administration in one of its more open steps so far," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based arms control association. "The only reason why the administration might want to pursue low-yield nuclear weapons is to develop a weapon they believe is less damaging to the immediate environment. "In the strange logic of these people, it would be more 'usable' - the political costs, they believe, will be lower," he said.

John Spratt, one of the ban's two authors, said: "Some in the administration and in Congress seem to think that the US can move the world in one direction while Washington moves in another - that we can continue to prevail on other countries not to develop nuclear weapons, while we develop new tactical applications for such weapons, and possibly resume nuclear testing."

~~~

from JON RAPPOPORT www.stratiawire.com

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

STARTLING ACCUSATION FROM A GULF WAR VET GROUP

FEBRUARY 25. The American Gulf War Veterans Association, led by Joyce Riley, has issued a press release that accuses US forces of setting huge oil fires in Kuwait at the end of Gulf War One.

At the time, those fires---blamed on Saddam---burned a billion barrels of oil over a seven-month period and raised a poisonous lingering cloud over the Persian Gulf nations.

The ecological/health disaster persists to this day (see a story posted by CNN on Jan. 3, 2003).

From Riley�s release: �One [US] veteran has now stepped forward and given a detailed account of how he and others in special teams moved forward of the front�and then set charges on the [Kuwait oil] well heads.�

This veteran, as yet unnamed, states, �We were mustered into the briefing tent at which point a gentleman who I first had thought to be an American began to brief us on the operation [to burn the oil fields]. I was concerned because he was not wearing a US uniform and insignias.�

The Gulf Wart Veterans� release continues: �The information provided over a series of meetings with this veteran corroborates reports from other veterans who are totally unconnected with this individual. This testimony brings into serious question the integrity of the US government, as it [the government] provided information to the American public and military during the last Gulf War.�

There could be several motives behind a secret US special ops venture to burn the Kuwaiti oil fields. To further slam Saddam---blaming the disaster on him. To create the appearance of an oil shortage. To keep certain recalcitrant leaders in Kuwait in line---�see what we can do if you try to dump �US support?��

However, the US veteran who spoke with Riley may also be implying that the operation to burn the oil fields was not, at the highest levels, a US government plot, although it used small groups of US soldiers. The briefer may have represented more shadowy power players.

I�ve made queries, and I�ll let you know if anything more falls out of the hopper.

~~~

This report appears on news.com.au.

US heavy-handedness baffles British

By Daniel McGory

03Apr03

THE American infantryman controlling the checkpoint on the road to Nasiriyah was clad in so much body armour he looked like Darth Vader.

Dark goggles covered most of his face, and a khaki scarf was wrapped around his nose and mouth. His M16 assault rifle was pointed at the windscreen of the car, which was clearly being driven by a young woman who had young children in the backseat.

This did not stop the young soldier from screaming at the occupants to "step out of the vehicle and move to the side of the road". How much of that muffled command the frightened woman understood was unclear, but as she hesitated and tried to comfort the youngest of her children, who was trying to clamber over the seat towards her, the infantrymen yelled even louder.

It was difficult to tell who was the more nervous. Rifles remained trained on the mother and children, who were made to stand 20m away from their car while it was searched. American patrols now appear to treat everyone as if they are suicide bombers.

British troops who have witnessed the Americans at close quarters in this war are baffled at their approach to Iraqi civilians. One captain in the Royal Marines, watching a US unit monitor a checkpoint, said: "The Americans are still behaving like invaders, not liberators. They behave as if they hate these people."

Many American troops speak as though they do.

You often hear them describe "Eye-rakis" in disparaging language. One US officer in charge of delivering humanitarian aid earlier this week likened the crush of people waiting to get hold of food and water to a pack of stray dogs.

His troops lashed at those pushing to the front with fists and rifle butts, even firing shots into the air.

When Irish Guards were nearly mobbed by a crowd trying to grab the food they were delivering to Zubayr this week, Major David Hannah urged his men to keep calm and get the people to sit down.

"They need to have their dignity respected," he said.

British commanders are appalled at how the Americans pulverise anything from afar before daring to set foot out of their armoured vehicles.

This was no better illustrated than in the first skirmish of the land war, where the American 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit was handed what should have been the easy capture of the port of Umm Qasr.

Royal Marine officers watched incredulously as their US compatriots bombed and shelled the town for five days. The experience of nearly 30 years policing Ulster has taught British forces that the only way to root out gunmen is to patrol on foot, searching house by house.

The rhetoric of US soldiers is often provocative. An American colonel, asked what the role of the Fifth Corps would be, replied: "We are going in there. We are going to root out the bad guys and kill them." His men whooped and punched the air as if they were watching a football match.

A British officer who witnessed this exchange shook his head, saying: "We are working from a different script but you won't get anyone in Whitehall to admit it."

From The Times

Karen�s Note: The fact that the British are all irate says something, because from other news reports I�ve read they�ve not treated the Iraqi civilians much better. Unfortunately, I can�t seem to find those articles right now�

~~~

and in more (sadly) Stripping of Our Civil Liberties News:

URL is here

ACLU Files Class-Action Lawsuit Challenging Unconstitutional Mass Arrest of Antiwar Demonstrators in Washington

March 27, 2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON- In a lawsuit filed in federal court today, the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area charged police officials with deliberately violating the constitutional rights of more than 400 peaceful antiwar demonstrators and bystanders by directing them into a police trap and then arresting them although they had not violated the law.

"In this country, the government is not supposed to arrest you unless you break the law," said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU of the National Capital Area. "But the evidence will show that the police deliberately rounded up hundreds of people who had not broken any law, many of whom were not even involved in the demonstration. No one in the neighborhood was safe from the lawless conduct of the D.C. police."

Among those arrested were a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and his daughter, a Maryland grandfather who was detained for more than 24 hours, and a man who suffered from broken ribs after being knocked down by the police.

The arrests occurred on September 27, 2002 in Pershing Park, located on Pennsylvania Avenue two blocks from the White House. Arrestees were charged with failing to obey a police order, but no order to disperse was ever given and people who tried to leave were physically prevented from leaving, according to the ACLU complaint. The true purpose of the mass arrests, the ACLU said, was to disrupt and prevent peaceful political demonstrations scheduled for that weekend.

The lawsuit also charged that arrestees were unjustly detained for as long as 30 hours in tight handcuffs and painful wrist-to-ankle restraints, with limited access to food and toilets, and were denied access to lawyers and given false information about their legal options.

The ACLU lawsuit, which names as defendants D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey and officials in the District, seeks compensation for each person whose rights were violated and a court order prohibiting the government from using similar unconstitutional tactics in the future.

The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, the National Lawyers Guild D.C. Chapter, and the law firm of Covington & Burling.

The lawsuit was filed as a "class action," in which a few representative individuals sue on behalf of the entire group whose rights were violated. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include:

� Julie Abbate, a local attorney and graduate of Howard Law School who was observing the demonstration when she was trapped in Pershing Park and arrested.

� Christopher Downes, a demonstrator who did not resist arrest but whose ribs were broken when he was knocked down by police.

� Joe Mayer, a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who accompanied his daughter to the demonstration, in part to be sure she didn�t get arrested. They were both arrested.

� Mindi Morgan, a student at Howard University whose efforts to leave Pershing Park to get to her class were rebuffed by the closing net of police officers.

� Tom Ulrich, a Maryland resident and grandfather who was trapped and arrested and detained for approximately 24 hours.

No date has yet been set for a court hearing.

~~~

Well, frankly I think I should be applauded for not focusing on these issues all along. I�m trying to be supportive over here, kids. And yes, I still believe that the Iraqi people will be better off without Saddam�

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