Did Bush plan to bomb Al-Jazeera?

The American press is predictably ignoring the story. Yet it is only too plausible that Bush wanted to wipe out what he saw as a nest of terrorists.

By Juan Cole

Nov. 30, 2005 | Last week, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported that George W. Bush had told U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004 that he was planning to bomb the Al-Jazeera offices in Qatar. The report, based on a leaked top-secret government memo, claimed that Blair dissuaded Bush from bombing the Arab cable news channel's offices. An anonymous source told the Mirror, "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." The Mirror quoted a government spokesperson, also anonymous, as suggesting that Bush's threat had been "humorous, not serious." But the newspaper quoted another source who said, "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan brushed off the report, telling the Associated Press in an e-mail, "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response." In a response to a question asked in Parliament, Tony Blair denied that Bush had told him he planned to take action against Al-Jazeera. The two men involved in the leak have been charged with violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.

The report kicked off a furor in Europe and the Middle East. It was, predictably, virtually ignored by the American press. It would be premature to claim that the Mirror's report, based on anonymous sources and a document that has not been made public, proves that Bush intended to bomb Al-Jazeera. But the frightening truth is that it is only too possible that the Mirror's report is accurate. Bush and his inner circle, in particular Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, had long demonized the channel as "vicious," "inexcusably biased" and abetting terrorists. Considering the administration's no-holds-barred approach to the "war on terror," the closed circle of ideologues that surround Bush, and his own messianic certainty about his divine mission to rid the world of "evil," the idea that he seriously considered bombing what he perceived as a nest of terrorist sympathizers simply cannot be ruled out. Add in the fact that the U.S. military had previously bombed Al-Jazeera's Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq, offices (the U.S. pleaded ignorance in the Kabul case, and claimed the Baghdad bombing was a mistake), and the case becomes stronger still.

Skeptics have argued that it is inconceivable that even Bush would consider bombing an office containing 400 journalists, located in the friendly Gulf nation of Qatar. But again, it is more than conceivable that Bush decided that it was essential to neutralize an enemy outpost, and left the tactical question of execution to spooks and generals. Certainly there is strong evidence that Bush and his advisors, in particular Rumsfeld, were thinking along these lines.

Ironically, Rumsfeld himself had telegraphed the strategy during an interview in 2001 on ... Al-Jazeera! On Oct. 16, 2001, Rumsfeld talked to the channel's Washington anchor Hafez Mirazi (who once worked for the Voice of America but left in disgust at the level of censorship he faced there). Although most such interviews are archived at the Department of Defense, this one appears to be absent. Mirazi showed it again on Monday, and it contained a segment in which Rumsfeld defended the targeting of radio stations that supported the Taliban. He made it clear right then that he believed in total war, and made no distinction between civilian and military targets. The radio stations, he said, were part of the Taliban war effort.

In fact, Al-Jazeera bears no resemblance to the pro-Taliban radio stations that Rumsfeld defended attacking.

Despite the extensive censorship regimes in the Middle East, Arab intellectuals joke, it is possible to get news about everything from only two sources. The Al-Jazeera television channel will report frankly on every Arab government save that of Qatar, its host and benefactor. On the other hand, Saudi pan-Arab newspapers published in London will report fully on all Arab governments save Saudi Arabia's own. Put them together, and you have complete coverage.

Al-Jazeera was founded in the 1990s by disgruntled Arab journalists, many of whom had worked for the BBC Arabic service, though a few came from the Voice of America. The station was a breath of fresh air in the stultified world of Arab news broadcasting, where news producers' idea of an exciting segment is a stationary camera on two Arab leaders sitting ceremonially on a Louis XIV sofa while martial music plays for several minutes. In contrast, Al-Jazeera anchors host live debates that often turn heated, and do not hesitate to ask sharp questions.

Despite the false stereotypes that circulate in the United States among pundits and politicians who have never watched the station, most of Al-Jazeera's programming is not Muslim fundamentalist in orientation. The rhetoric is that of Arab nationalism, and the reporters are only interested in fundamentalism to the extent that it is anti-imperialist in tone. This slant gives many of the programs the musty, antiquated feel of an old Gamal Abdul Nasser speech from the 1960s. In the Arab world, clothes speak to politics. The male anchors and reporters usually sport business suits, and the mostly unveiled women might as well be on the runway of a European fashion show. The station does carry a program with the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim brother who fled Abdul Nasser's regime. But even al-Qaradawi gave a fatwa (ruling) allowing Muslims to fight in the U.S. military against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Al-Jazeera broadcasts videotapes by Muslim radicals such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, angering Bush administration officials. But broadcasting their tapes does not constitute an endorsement, and it seems clear what the al-Qaida leaders would do to the modern, non-theocratic journalists of Al-Jazeera if they took over Qatar. The sensibilities about such matters, in any case, differ from country to country. There was a time when an Irish Republican Army figure such as Gerry Adams could not be shown speaking on British television, on the grounds that he was a terrorist. But the U.S. was notoriously unhelpful in boycotting the IRA, whose cause was popular among many Irish-Americans. Rumsfeld has complained bitterly about other news servicing, calling the German press, for example, "worse than al-Qaida."

Political scientist Marc Lynch, in his just-published "Voices of the New Arab Public," notes that despite their tilt toward Arab nationalism, the station's anchors often ask sharp questions of state spokesmen. For example, one quizzed Iraq Foreign Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf (later notorious as "Baghdad Bob") in 1998, inquiring why, if Iraq had no forbidden weapons, it did not simply allow the inspectors into the country.

Among the chief criticisms launched by Bush administration figures such as Rumsfeld against Al-Jazeera was that it showed graphic images of the dead and wounded from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Bush administration had learned the lesson of Vietnam, that images of actual warfare generally appall the American public, which seems less bothered by words describing the horrors than it does by pictures. Reporters were forbidden to photograph the caskets of dead American soldiers coming into Dover Air Force base. U.S. newspaper editors exercised a rigorous self-censorship, routinely declining the more graphic images of war on offer from the wire services, apparently on the belief that they would not be acceptable to an American public.

Al-Jazeera was the prime source of pictures of warfare, including dead and wounded, for the Afghanistan war. On Nov. 11, 2001, the New York Times quoted Auberi Edler, a foreign news editor at France 2, as complaining about the Pentagon policy of embargoing images from the war: "Our greatest pressure is that we have no images ... The only interesting images we get are from Al-Jazeera. It's bad for everybody."

The U.S. tactic of using smart bombs to target foreign fighters holing up in urban areas proved a challenge to Western news photographers, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. If they were not embedded with U.S. troops in areas where such bombing was taking place, they were in extreme danger. If they were with the troops, they could say little more than that they had heard bombing in the distance. The horror sometimes inflicted on civilians, despite the best efforts of military targeters, remained off camera for American audiences. Al-Jazeera, however, developed stringers who could provide that footage.

Rumsfeld became increasingly exasperated with the channel as the Iraq adventure went bad. In early 2004, according to Fox News, he began equating its news coverage of Iraq with murder: "'We are being hurt by Al-Jazeera in the Arab world,' he said. 'There is no question about it. The quality of the journalism is outrageous -- inexcusably biased -- and there is nothing you can do about it except try to counteract it.' He said it was turning Arabs against the United States. 'You could say it causes the loss of life,' he added. 'It's causing Iraqi people to be killed' by inflaming anti-American passions and encouraging attacks against Iraqis who assist the Americans, he added."

The notion that reporting on the guerrilla war in Iraq abets terrorism is typical of the logic of any extreme right-wing political movement. All censorship by all military regimes in the Middle East has been imposed on the grounds that journalists' speech is dangerous to society and could cause public turmoil (fitna). Rumsfeld's reasoning in this regard would be instantly recognizable to any Arab journalist from their experience with their own governments.

Of course, Rumsfeld did not consider how many lives -- tens of thousands -- have been lost because of his own inaccurate statements to the American public about Iraq, which he maintained had dangerous weapons of mass destructions and even more dangerous weapons programs. He and Vice President Dick Cheney also alleged an operational connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that did not exist, implying repeatedly that Saddam was involved in Sept. 11. If speech really is murder, Rumsfeld is the Ted Bundy of governmental officials.

Rumsfeld, then, considered Al-Jazeera an accessory to terror, and there is no reason to suppose that Bush did not share this view. Seen in this light, Bush's plan to bomb its central offices makes perfect sense. Bush has often boasted about his harshness toward murderers, and during his debate with Al Gore in 2000, he positively scared some in his audience by the macho swagger with which he described executing criminals while he was governor of Texas.

The secretary's rage grew in intensity thereafter. At the height of the first U.S. attack on Fallujah, which was ordered by Bush in a fit of pique over the killing and desecration of four private security guards (three of them Americans, one South African), Rumsfeld exploded at a Pentagon briefing on April 15:

If I could follow up, Monday General Abizaid chastised Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyah for their coverage of Fallujah and saying that hundreds of civilians were being killed. Is there an estimate on how many civilians have been killed in that fighting? And can you definitively say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can definitively say that what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.

Do you have a civilian casualty count?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Of course not, we're not in the city. But you know what our forces do; they don't go around killing hundreds of civilians. That's just outrageous nonsense! It's disgraceful what that station is doing.

In fact, local medical authorities put the number of dead at Fallujah, most of them women, children and noncombatants, at around 600.

As the London Times pointed out on Sunday, Bush's conference with Blair, at which he announced his plan to bomb the channel's Doha offices, occurred the very next day.

The outrage of the Bush administration had to do in part with what it saw as inaccuracies in Al-Jazeera reporting (as when it incorrectly alleged that spring that a U.S. helicopter had been downed, based on local eyewitnesses or Iraqi guerrilla sources). In the fog of war, however, most news outlets commit such errors. The real source of Rumsfeld's volcanic ire, and Bush's alleged turn as would-be mafia don and war criminal, was the graphic images of the warfare in Iraq that Al-Jazeera was willing to display at a time when no major U.S. news source would do so. Enraged, Rumsfeld began accusing the station of sins it never committed. In summer of 2005, in Singapore, the secretary of defense said, "If anyone lived in the Middle East and watched a network like the Al-Jazeera day after day after day, even if he was an American, he would start waking up and asking what's wrong. But America is not wrong. It's the people who are going on television chopping off people's heads, that is wrong. And television networks that carry it and promote it and jump on the spark every time there is a terrorist act are promoting the acts."

In fact, according to its media spokesman Jihad Ballout, Al-Jazeera "has never, ever shown a beheading of any hostage." Nor had its anchors come on the screen and urged beheadings in the manic way that Rumsfeld suggested. Al-Jazeera reporters may not like U.S. imperialism very much, but they are not fundamentalist murderers.

Despite the smokescreens that politicians and diplomats are attempting to throw up by suggesting that Bush was just joking, there is every reason to suspect that he was deadly serious and that Blair barely managed to argue him out of this parlous course of action. First, the Kabul and Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera had already been bombed by the U.S. military. In each case the action was called a mistake. One such bombing might indeed have been an error, but two arouses suspicion. And now we know there was talk of a third.

The reaction in the Arab world to the Daily Mirror report has been a firestorm of outrage. Some Qataris are calling for the government to end U.S. basing rights in that country. Others are lamenting the hypocrisy of a superpower that represents itself as the leading edge of liberty in the Middle East but has so little respect for press freedom that its leader would cavalierly speak of wiping out hundreds of civilian journalists. If the British documents surface and the story's seriousness is borne out, whatever shreds of credibility Bush still has in the Middle East will be completely gone. After all, the current phase of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and the two wars Americans have fought in the region, came in response to the terrorist bombing of innocent civilians in downtown office buildings.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/11/30/al_jazeera/index1.html

Al-Jazeera, Serbia, and Liberal Amnesia

When killing journalists was permissible
by Brendan O'Neill

Many in my profession – journalism – were understandably outraged to discover that in a get-together with his partner in crime Tony Blair in April 2004, President Bush allegedly made a bad-taste gag about bombing the Qatar headquarters of the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera.

There is a memo doing the rounds, leaked by two British civil servants to the Daily Mirror, which reportedly refers to a conversation between Blair and Bush, in which Blair talked Bush out of a "plot" to attack al-Jazeera's buildings in the business district of Doha, the capital city of Qatar.

Some early reports suggested that Bush may have been seriously considering whacking al-Jazeera as punishment for its perceived anti-Americanism. Now, other, wiser commentators suggest that it was a bad, bitter joke on Bush's part, an aside in which he wondered out loud whether a few bombs might teach those pesky Arab journos a thing or two.

Either way, the revelations have caused a transatlantic firestorm. Al-Jazeera staff held a 15-minute protest in Qatar, and more than 100 of them signed a petition calling on the Bush administration to end its "attacks and incitement against al-Jazeera." Britain's attorney general – the government's legal adviser – has dramatically threatened to use the draconian Official Secrets Act to prosecute anyone who dares to publish the contents of the memo.

British journalists have rightly taken umbrage at the attorney general's bully-boy tactics. Boris Johnson, editor of the Spectator, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he was prepared to defy the attorney general and go to jail to publish "the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera." Jon Snow, who anchors Channel 4 News, denounced the attorney general's "heavy-handed gagging," which seems designed to "save the government and George Bush's blushes rather than national security."

It is not surprising that writers would wish to defend fellow writers and broadcasters overseas from a trigger-happy president, especially since the U.S. military has already bombed al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul in November 2001 and targeted al-Jazeera journalists in Iraq. But I have a question. Why, right now, do some journalists seem more outraged by the alleged threats and slurs made by President Bush against a TV station than they were about an earlier president's actual bombing of a TV station?

Why are they red-faced with rage and indignation over the Bush and al-Jazeera incident, yet they turned a blind eye – or even tried to justify – President Bill Clinton's outrageous bombing of Serbian TV during the Kosovo War in 1999, which left journalists dead and maimed?

I don't mean to be a pain, or to rain on the current attacks on Bush for his alleged scurrilous aside to Blair. Rather, this is a serious question – and I think that in attempting to answer it we might uncover an uncomfortable home truth about the inconsistent approach taken by some liberal-left journalists to opposing bloody wars of intervention.

When NATO – with Clinton and Blair at the helm – bombed the headquarters of RTS (Serbian state television and radio) in central Belgrade on April 23, 1999, it was no joke. It was the real thing. In the middle of the night – at 2:20 a.m. – cruise missiles rained down on RTS headquarters, destroying the entrance and leaving at least one studio in ruins. Over 120 people were working in the building at the time; at least 16 were killed and another 16 were injured – all of them civilians, most of them technicians and support staff. The BBC's John Simpson described seeing "the body of a make-up artist … lying in a dressing room."

This was an intentional attack on civilian workers in the media. NATO officials talked openly, and without shame, about using such attacks as a means of scoring points in the propaganda war and further weakening President Slobodan Milosevic's hold on Serbia. NATO declared: "Strikes against TV transmitters and broadcast facilities are part of our campaign to dismantle the FRY propaganda machinery which is a vital part of President Milosevic's control mechanism."

Today journalists wonder whether or not Blair laughed at Bush's joke about bombing al-Jazeera. Never mind all that. Here is what Blair said – on the record and in public – about bombing and killing journalists in the Kosovo campaign: the media "is the apparatus that keeps [Milosevic] in power and we are entirely justified as NATO allies in damaging and taking on those targets."

Former British minister Clare Short – who resigned over the Iraq war and who now fancies herself an antiwar warrior – also justified the bombing of journalists in 1999. She said: "This is a war, this is a serious conflict, untold horrors are being done. The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target." Tell that to the family of the make-up girl.

The attacks were designed to cause maximum damage to the TV station and, in the words of one U.S. official, it was hoped that the bombings would have "maximum domestic and international propaganda value" for NATO. The military journal Jane's Defense Weekly reported in July 2000 that NATO military planners assessed which parts of the TV headquarters were most likely to contain the controls for fire alarms and sprinkler systems – and the missiles were programmed to hit these spots so that the fire caused by the bombing would spread fast and prove difficult to put out.

Clinton, Blair, and their NATO cronies justified these attacks as "legitimate" attempts to weaken the enemy by taking out his propaganda machine. Are we expected to believe that camera operators, sound editors, and a make-up artist were somehow key to keeping Milosevic in power? In truth, the bombing marked a new low in the "humanitarian" warfare favored by Clinton and Blair: it was directly targeted at civilians; it was designed to cause maximum fire damage; and it was about boosting the "domestic and international" standing of America and Britain. Clinton and Blair clearly considered the lives of a few technical TV staff as a small price to pay for achieving these cynical, self-serving aims.

And yet, outrage among journalists about this attack on fellow journalists was notable by its absence; it was certainly far more muted than the hand-wringing that has greeted revelations of the Bush-Blair incident. In Britain, some journalist trade unions refused to condemn the bombing of RTS headquarters. The broadcasting union BECTU did not even comment on the attack and ordered that BECTU banners should not be taken on antiwar marches.

There was almost a celebratory tone in the Guardian's initial coverage of the bombing of RTS. In its first report after the attack, the paper repeated NATO's justifications for the assault without question, declaring: "NATO targeted the heart of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's power base early today by bombing the headquarters of Serbian state television, taking it off the air in the middle of a news bulletin." That news report ended by congratulating Blair for continuing "to claim the moral high ground against opponents of the bombing by placing Kosovo in the broader context of international obligation."

Some journalists condemned the bombing, not because it was morally and politically bankrupt, but because it handed a "propaganda victory" to those who opposed the war. Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, a supporter of the Kosovo bombing campaign, said "it was a pointless act of folly to bomb the RTS TV station," since it only provided a "gift to NATO's many critics."

Of course, there were journalists who took a stand against the bombing of Serbian TV. In Britain, for example, the spokesman for the National Union of Journalists vigorously opposed the attack. But in general – at a time when many in the media not only supported the intervention in Kosovo but positively cheered it on – there was a muted response to this outrageous assault on media workers, and more a sense of embarrassment about it rather than outright opposition to it.

This disparity between the mainstream media's challenge to Bush over al-Jazeera and their earlier response to Clinton's bombing of Serbian TV is revealing.

From Clare Short to Guardian reporters to union officials, some of those who today ridicule Britain and America's illegal war in Iraq were at the forefront of supporting an equally illegal war over Kosovo (that intervention also did not win the unanimous backing of the United Nations). Indeed, some of the arguments they used to justify the attacks on Yugoslavia – including the need to punish a "genocidal dictator," to protect a "vulnerable population," and to fulfill an "international obligation" to spread peace and harmony – have been repeated by Bush and Blair in relation to Iraq.

Journalists, especially of a liberal-left persuasion, are strikingly inconsistent in their attitudes to Western wars of aggression. This means they are not in a very good position to complain about aspects of the war in Iraq, considering that their unquestioning support for the Kosovo war can be seen as helping to pave the way for subsequent interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

It also means that, sometimes, their current criticisms of Bush ring a little hollow. It is time we were consistently critical of the claims made by our leaders about the need for military intervention overseas.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/oneill.php?articleid=8161

EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY

PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

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"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions.

"I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."

Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.

At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.

Al-Jazeera infuriated Washington and London by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.

The station, watched by millions, has also been used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to broadcast atrocities and to threaten the West.

Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha.

Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.

To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.

The memo, which also included details of troop deployments, turned up in May last year at the Northampton constituency office of then Labour MP Tony Clarke.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh, 49, is accused under the Official Secrets Act of passing it to Leo O'Connor, 42, who used to work for Mr Clarke. Both are bailed to appear at Bow Street court next week.

Mr Clarke, who lost at the election, returned the memo to No 10.

He said Mr O'Connor had behaved "perfectly correctly".

Neither Mr O'Connor or Mr Keogh were available. No 10 did not comment

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid...dally-name_page.html

Pentagon admits to using controversial weapon

Channel 4, UK

American military leaders have admitted to using white phosphorous weapons against Iraqi militants.

The weapons contain chemicals that can contain horrific burns and the Pentagon had previously denied they were used.

They claimed the flammable material was only used to illuminate enemy positions or create smokescreens but US soldiers had written about the practice in an internal army magazine and a spokesman later confirmed white phosphorous had been deployed as an incendiary weapon during the assault on Fallujah.

The admission backs up claims made in an documentary by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, which alleged Iraqi civilians had died of burns caused by the weapon.

Witnesses described other victims, including women and children, left with "caramelised" skin as a result of their injuries.

The Ministry of Defence said today that British troops have stocks of the chemical and have used it during operations in Iraq to create smokescreens.

But unlike the US, the UK is a signatory to protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons, which prohibits the use of the substance as an incendiary weapon against civilians or in civilian areas.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: "A vital part of the effort in Iraq is to win the battle for hearts and minds.

"The use of this weapon may technically have been legal, but its effects are such that it will hand a propaganda victory to the insurgency.

"The denial of use followed by the admission will simply convince the doubters that there was something to hide."

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "Use of phosphorus by the US is a matter for the US.

"British forces do possess white phosphorus, but it is used for producing smoke and that is how it has been used in Iraq."

http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=1229913
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BBC News, UK

Q&A: White phosphorus

The Pentagon's confirmation that it used white phosphorus as a weapon during last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja has sparked criticism.

The BBC News website looks at the facts behind the row.

What is white phosphorus?

White phosphorus is a solid, waxy man-made chemical which ignites spontaneously at about 30C and produces an intense heat, bright light and thick pillars of smoke.

It continues to burn until deprived of oxygen and, if extinguished with water, can later reignite if the particles dry out and are exposed again to the air.

Also known by the military as WP or Willy Pete, white phosphorus is used in munitions, to mark enemy targets and to produce smoke for concealing troop movements.

It can also be used as an incendiary device to firebomb enemy positions.

What are its effects?

If particles of ignited white phosphorus land on a person's skin, they can continue to burn right through flesh to the bone. Toxic phosphoric acid can also be released into wounds, risking phosphorus poisoning.

Skin burns must be immersed in water or covered with wet cloths to prevent re-combustion until the particles can be removed.

Exposure to white phosphorus smoke in the air can also cause liver, kidney, heart, lung or bone damage and even death.

A former US soldier who served in Iraq says breathing in smoke close to a shell caused the throat and lungs to blister until the victim suffocated, with the phosphorus continuing to burn them from the inside.

Long-term exposure to lesser concentrations over several months or years may lead to a condition called "phossy jaw", where mouth wounds are caused that fail to heal and the jawbone eventually breaks down.

How did the US use it?

The US initially denied reports it had used white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja in November 2004, saying it had been used only for illumination and laying smokescreens.

WHITE PHOSPHORUS

Spontaneously flammable chemical used for battlefield illumination

Contact with particles causes burning of skin and flesh

Use of incendiary weapons prohibited for attacking civilians (Protocol III of Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons)

Protocol III not signed by US

However, the Pentagon has now confirmed the substance was used as an "incendiary weapon" during the assault.

It was deployed as a conventional - rather than chemical - munition, the military said, and its principal use was as a smokescreen and to mark enemy targets.

However, the US has now admitted its forces also used white phosphorus rounds to a lesser extent to flush enemy forces out of covered positions, allowing them to be targeted with high explosives.

The US military denies using the chemical against civilians and stresses its deployment is not illegal.

What are the international conventions?

Washington is not a signatory to any treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus against civilians.

White phosphorus is covered by Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons, which prohibits its use as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations or in air attacks against enemy forces in civilian areas.

The US - unlike 80 other countries including the UK - is not a signatory to Protocol III.

How widely is it used?

White phosphorus was extensively used as a smokescreen by Russian forces in the battle for the Chechen city of Grozny in December 1994.

The UK has confirmed it has the chemical and has used it in Iraq - but only to lay smokescreens.

The use of white phosphorus in incendiary devices dates back to World War I and beyond.

It was used in World War II predominantly for smoke screens, marker shells, incendiaries, hand grenades and tracer bullets.

The chemical also has many non-military applications, being widely used by industry in products ranging from toothpaste to fertiliser.

What is the current furore about?

The row began when Italy's state television network Rai claimed that white phosphorus had been used against civilians in a "massive and indiscriminate way" during the Falluja offensive.

Its documentary, Falluja - The Hidden Massacre, alleged that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of the burns it caused.

The allegations prompted demonstrations outside the US embassy in Rome by anti-war protesters and left-wing Italian politicians. Some European Parliament members have also demanded an inquiry into the munitions' use.

Critics say phosphorus bombs should not be used in areas where there is a risk they could cause serious burns or death to civilians.

Some have claimed the use of white phosphorus contravenes the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. This bans the use of any "toxic chemical" weapons which causes "death, harm or temporary incapacitation to humans or animals through their chemical action on life processes".

Professor Paul Rogers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies, told the BBC that white phosphorus could probably be considered a chemical weapon if deliberately aimed at civilians.

Washington's initial denial of the use of white phosphorus as a weapon against enemy forces and subsequent retraction have been seen as damaging to its public image - despite the fact it has breached no treaty obligations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4441902.stm

UN hails Musharraf's fighter jet delay

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's decision to postpone the purchase of F-16 jet fighters is a welcome move which will free up money for needy earthquake victims, the United Nations said.

"These are definitely welcome comments," the UN's emergency coordinator in Pakistan Jan Vandemoortele told AFP, referring to Musharraf's announcement on Friday that he would delay plans to buy around 25 of the multi-million-dollar planes.

"It will certainly free up the money to take a larger part of the pie, because the work has to be done and if the international community will not come up with the resources, the ultimate resources will be domestic," he said.

Musharraf said during a tour of the devastated city of Muzaffarabad Friday that he was putting off the long-awaited deal to buy the US-built warplanes to focus on aid efforts.

"We are going to postpone that... we want to bring maximum relief and construction efforts," Musharraf told reporters.

The giant 7.6-magnitude earthquake four weeks ago killed 73,000 people and seriously injured about the same number. It also left about 3.3 million homeless and one million in urgent need of food supplies.

Islamabad estimates the cost of rebuilding devastated areas will be about five billion dollars -- a huge sum for a poverty-stricken country that already spends 17 percent of its national budget on defence.

Pakistan already has more than 30 multi-role F-16s made by US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. It hopes to buy another squadron of 25 of the planes, which are worth around 25 million dollars each.

Washington approved the sale of the F-16s to key "war on terror" ally Pakistan in March after blocking it for 15 years to protest the country's nuclear weapons programme.

Relations between the two countries warmed up again after Pakistan lined up with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, abandoning its former allies, the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan.

India was angered by the fighter deal, although the United States said it was prepared to sell New Delhi both F-16s and more sophisticated F-18 fighter-bombers if it wanted them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051105/wl_asia_afp/quakesasiapakistanusmilitaryairun
http://sify.com/news_info/news/international/fullstory.php?id=13977643

Rumsfeld: No U.N. access to Guantanamo inmates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spurning a request by U.N. human rights investigators, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday the United States will not allow them to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.


Rumsfeld also told a Pentagon news conference that prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were staging a hunger strike that began in early August as a successful ploy to attract media attention.

The three U.N. investigators, including one who focuses on torture, said on Monday they would turn down an invitation extended by the Pentagon on Friday to visit Guantanamo unless they were permitted to interview the detainees. The invitation came nearly four years after the visits were first requested.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. government will not change its policy of giving such access to detainees only to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a neutral body that keeps its findings confidential.

"There's got to be a limit to how one does that," Rumsfeld said of providing access to detainees.

"And the ICRC has been doing it for a great many years and has had complete and total access ever since Guantanamo was opened. And so we're not inclined to add (to) the number of people that would be given that extensive access."

The invitations went to Austria's Manfred Nowak, special investigator on torture, Pakistan's Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom, and Algeria's Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention.

27 DETAINEES ENGAGED IN HUNGER STRIKE

Human rights activists have criticized the United States for the indefinite detention of the roughly 505 detainees held at Guantanamo. Former prisoners have stated they were tortured there, and the ICRC last year accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on Guantanamo prisoners. The military has denied torture has occurred.

The U.N. investigators said they proposed a December 6 visit but would go only if permitted to talk to the prisoners.

Zerrougui said on Monday the U.N. investigators had never agreed to visit a place where they would not have full access to all detainees, and asked the United States to provide such access "in the spirit of compromise."

The military said on Tuesday 27 detainees currently were engaging in the hunger strike, including 24 receiving forced-feedings. Detainees' lawyers estimated that about 200 are taking part. These lawyers said the strike was a protest of the prisoners' conditions and lack of legal rights.

Asked about the motivation of the hunger strikers, Rumsfeld said, "Well, I suppose that what they're trying to do is to capture press attention, obviously, and they've succeeded."

He added, "There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that."

U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler last week ordered the government to provide medical records on Guantanamo prisoners who are being force-fed and to notify their lawyers about forced feedings.

The judge said detainees' lawyers had presented "deeply troubling" allegations of U.S. personnel violently shoving feeding tubes as thick as a finger through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives, with detainees vomiting blood as U.S. personnel mocked them.

Rumsfeld appeared to distance himself from the decision to force-feed detainees.

"I'm not a doctor and I'm not the kind of a person who would be in a position to approve or disapprove. It seems to me, looking at it from this distance, is that the responsible people are the combatant commanders. And the Army is the executive agent for detainees," Rumsfeld said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051102/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_dc

URGENT!! All Eyes on Gaza Disengagement

Source(s): counterpunch.org, ifamericansknew.org

What May Come After the Evacuation of Jewish Settlers from the Gaza Strip
A Warning from Israel

By Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe, and Tamar Yaron
July 15, 2005

We feel that it is urgent and necessary to raise the alarm regarding what may come during and after evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967, in the event that the evacuation is implemented.

We held back on getting this statement published and circulated, seeking additional feedback from our peers. The publication in Ha’aretz (22 June 2005) quoting statements by General (Reserves) Eival Giladi, the head of the Coordination and Strategy team of the Prime Minister’s Office, motivated us not to delay publication and circulation any further. Confirming our worst fears, General (Res.) Eival Giladi went on record in print and on television to the effect that “Israel will act in a very resolute manner in order to prevent terror attacks and [militant] fire while the disengagement is being implemented” and that “If pinpoint response proves insufficient, we may have to use weaponry that causes major collateral damage, including helicopters and planes, with mounting danger to surrounding people.”

We believe that one primary, unstated motive for the determination of the government of the State of Israel to get the Jewish settlers of the Qatif (Katif) settlement block out of the Gaza Strip may be to keep them out of harm’s way when the Israeli government and military possibly trigger an intensified mass attack on the approximately one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, of whom about half are 1948 Palestine refugees.

The scenario could be similar to what has already happened in the past - a tactic that Ariel Sharon has used many times in his military career - i.e., utilizing provocation in order to launch massive attacks.

Following this pattern, we believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz are considering to utilize provocation for vicious attacks in the near future on the approximately one and a half million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip: a possible combination of intensified state terror and mass killing. The Israeli army is not likely to risk the kind of casualties to its soldiers that would be involved in employing ground troops on a large scale in the Gaza Strip. With General Dan Halutz as Chief of Staff they don’t need to. It was General Dan Halutz, in his capacity as Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who authorized the bombing of a civilian Gaza City quarter with a bomb weighing one ton, and then went on record as saying that he sleeps well and that the only thing he feels when dropping a bomb is a slight bump of the aircraft.

The initiators of this alarm have been active for many decades in the defence of human rights inside the State of Israel and beyond. We do not have the academic evidence to support our feeling, but given past behavior, ideological leanings and current media spin initiated by the Israeli government and military, we believe that the designs of the State of Israel are clear, and we submit that our educated intuition with matters pertaining to the defence of human rights has been more often correct than otherwise.

We urge all those who share the concern above to add their names to ours and urgently give this alarm as wide a circulation as possible.

Circulating and publishing this text may constitute a significant factor in deterring the Israeli government, thus protecting the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip from this very possible catastrophe and contributing to prevent yet more war crimes from occurring.

Please sign, circulate, and publish this alarm without delay!

Please send notification of your signature to Tamar Yaron tiyaron@hazorea.org.il.

WE WOULD ALSO APPRECIATE RECEIVING NOTIFICATION IF THE ALARM WAS PUBLISHED IN ANY MEDIA AND/OR IF IT WAS SENT TO A GROUP DISTRIBUTION LIST.

Uri Davis, Sakhnin, uridavis@actcom.co.il,
Ilan Pappe, Tiv’on, pappe@poli.haifa.ac.il, and
Tamar Yaron, Kibbutz Hazorea, tiyaron@hazorea.org.il

Nationalism Blinds Us With Arrogance Put Away The Flags

June 30, 2005
Howard Zinn

On July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder - one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking - cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on - have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours - huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction - what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession" (Psalm 2:8).

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President William McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipinos.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy?"

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail last year that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

Howard Zinn is the author of "A People's History of the United States" (Perennial Classics, 2003). He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, an op-ed service.

Poll: China Image Scores Better Than U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States' popularity in many countries - including longtime allies in Europe - is lagging behind even communist China.

The image of the U.S. slipped sharply in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, and two years later has shown few signs of rebounding either in Western Europe or the Muslim world, an international poll found.

``The U.S. image has improved slightly, but is still broadly negative,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. ``It's amazing when you see the European public rating the United States so poorly, especially in comparison with China.''

In Britain, which prides itself on its ``special relationship'' with Washington, almost two-thirds of Britons, 65 percent, saw China favorably, compared with 55 percent who held a positive view of the United States. In France, 58 percent had an upbeat view of China, compared with 43 percent who felt that way about the U.S. The results were nearly the same in Spain and the Netherlands, the Pew polling found.

The United States' favorability rating was lowest among three Muslim nations that are also U.S. allies - Turkey, Pakistan and Jordan - where only about one-fifth of those polled viewed the U.S. in a positive light. Only Indonesia and Poland viewed the U.S. more positively than China. [Full Article]

Related Link: Pew Research Center Survey

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Saddam Insists He's Still Iraq President

NEW YORK - Saddam Hussein loves Doritos, hates Froot Loops, admires President Reagan, thinks Clinton was "OK" and considers both Presidents Bush "no good." He talks a lot, worries about germs and insists he is still president of
Iraq.

Those and other details of the deposed Iraqi leader's life in U.S. military custody appear in the July issue of GQ magazine, based on interviews with five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who went to Iraq in 2003 and were assigned to Saddam's guard detail for nearly 10 months.

The magazine, which reached newsstands Monday, said the GIs could not tell their families what they were doing and signed pledges not to reveal the location or other details of the U.S.-run compound where Saddam was an HVD, or "high value detainee," awaiting trial by Iraqi authorities for mass killings and other crimes.

However, the five soldiers told GQ of their personal interactions with Saddam, saying he spoke with them in rough English, was interested in their lives and even invited them back to Iraq when he returns to power.

"He'd always tell us he was still the president. That's what he thinks, 100 percent," said Spc. Jesse Dawson, 25, of Berwick, Pa.

A Pentagon spokesman had no comment on the article.

The GIs recalled that Saddam had harsh words for the Bushes, each of whom went to war against him.

"The Bush father, son, no good," Cpl. Jonathan "Paco" Reese, 22, of Millville, Pa., quoted Saddam as saying.

Spc. Sean O'Shea, then 19, of Minooka, Pa., said Saddam later mellowed in that view. "Towards the end, he was saying that he doesn't hold any hard feelings and he just wanted to talk to (George W.) Bush, to make friends with him," he told the magazine.

Dawson quoted Saddam as saying: "He knows I have nothing, no mass weapons. He knows he'll never find them."

Their description of the man who once lived in palaces and now occupies a cell with no personal privacy matched recently published photos, apparently smuggled out of prison, showing Saddam in his underwear and a long robe.

The story said that once, when Saddam fell during his twice-a-week shower, "panic ensued. No one wanted him to be hurt while being guarded by Americans." One GI had to help Saddam back to his cell, while another carried his underwear.

Saddam was friendly toward his young guards and sometimes offered fatherly advice. When O'Shea told him he was not married, Saddam "started telling me what to do," recalled the soldier. "He was like, `You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean.'"

Then he smiled, made what O'Shea interpreted as a "spanking" gesture, laughed and went back to doing his laundry in the sink.

The soldiers also said Saddam was a "clean freak" who washed after shaking hands and used diaper wipes to clean meal trays, utensils and table before eating. "He had germophobia or whatever you call it," Dawson said.

The article said Saddam preferred Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast, telling O'Shea, "No Froot Loops." He ate fish and chicken but refused beef.

For a time his favorite snack was Cheetos, and when that ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story said. One day, guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson said.

The magazine said Saddam told his guards that when the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003, he "tried to flee in a taxicab as the tanks were rolling in," and U.S. planes struck the palace he was trying to reach instead of the one he was in.

"Then he started laughing," recalled Reese. "He goes, `America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace.'"

Saddam also said his capture in an underground hideout on Dec. 13, 2003, resulted from betrayal by the only man who knew where he was, and had been paid to keep the secret.

"He was really mad about that," Dawson said. "He compared himself to Jesus, how Judas told on Jesus. He was like, `That's how it was for me.' If his Judas never said anything, nobody ever would have found him, he said."

U.S. officials said at the time that intelligence from several sources led to Saddam's capture.

The magazine said Saddam prayed five times a day and kept a Quran that he claimed to have found in rubble near his hideout. "He proudly showed (it) to the boys because it was burned around the edges and had a bullet hole in it," GQ said.

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. Full Article

Behind the Downing Street Memos

Behind the Downing Street Memos Lurks the specter of treason

by Justin Raimondo

Everyone is talking about the Downing Street memos, and they are important – although not for the reasons generally assumed. Naturally, we covered these on Antiwar.com when they were first published, but now that the "mainstream" media is finally paying attention it behooves us to go over them with a fine-tooth comb, in an attempt to tease some meaning out of the daily slaughter on the evening news. The key paragraph in the first memo, and the one most cited, is this: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." The mysterious "C" is none other than Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, Britain's intelligence service, no doubt conferring with his American equivalent, then-CIA director George Tenet. The date – July 23, 2002 – is significant: if you'll remember, at that time our lying president was telling us that war with Iraq would be a "last resort." Yeah, sure. Not that anybody really believed him, but it's significant that he still felt it necessary to make the effort to deceive. Meanwhile, the War Party was plotting to pull a fast one, using every trick in the book to gin up a war with Iraq – a constant stream of wild stories presented in the guise of "intelligence" and planted in a compliant media, all positing "weapons of mass destruction" poised to hit American cities. Bob Woodward revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made in his book, Plan of Attack, but the media doesn't cover books. Leaked memos, however, are another matter: especially ones with "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY" emblazoned at the top, along with a further notation: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." Well, yes, we genuinely do need to know why our young people are dying by the dozens every week, until now it's over 1,700 and rising. And it isn't sensitive anymore, now that the horse is out of the barn, so it's OK for the public to see these previously secret documents: that's why we're reading them today and why they're being covered in the "mainstream" media.[Full Story] Copyright 2005 Antiwar.com

U.S. House votes to curb Patriot Act, defies Bush

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday defied President Bush by approving a measure making it harder for federal agents to secretly gather information on people's library reading habits and bookstore purchases.

The House voted 238-187 to scale back the government's powers to conduct secret investigations that were authorized by the Patriot Act, a post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism law.

"We can fight terrorism without undermining basic constitutional rights. That's what the message of today is about," said Rep. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who pushed the measure through the House with the support of 38 Republicans.

The White House has warned Congress that any weakening of the Patriot Act would prompt senior advisers to recommend that Bush veto the $57.5 billion bill to fund activities next year for the Justice Department and other federal agencies, which now contains Sanders' amendment. [Full Story]

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Debate deepens over Guantánamo

Wednesday's hearing in Congress highlights the rift between the Bush administration and critics over the role of detention.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – In Washington, debate over conditions at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is escalating into a larger argument: What role should detention properly play in a conflict with stateless, extremist enemies?

To top US officials, the war against terrorism is unexplored territory. Thus traditional doctrines covering criminals and military prisoners do not apply.

To critics, the continued fuzzy legal status of Guantánamo detainees undermines US values - not to mention the nation's image abroad. Shutting the camp, they claim, is now the administration's best option. [Full Story]

Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor.

Relatives of Gujarat riot victims seek damages from state

AHMEDABAD, India (AFP) - Survivors of one of the worst massacres during the 2002 sectarian riots in Gujarat filed a compensation claim against the western Indian state's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party.

Over 120 people from the minority Muslim community were burnt or hacked to death by Hindu mobs in February 2002 in two separate residential colonies.

A former member of parliament, Ehsan Jaffri, from the opposition Congress Party, was among those killed in the riots.

"Today, I have filed a civil suit for compensation along with 24 other families of the Gulbarg Society who lost all in a single day of communal hatred," said his son Tanvir Jaffri.

He said the victims were seeking total damages of seven million rupees (162,800 dollars) from the BJP state government as well as Hindu right wing groups.

Representatives of the families whose kin were killed said the process of filing the compensation claim was delayed because of red tape.

The Gujarati government was accused of turning a blind eye to the riots in which about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, died.

The riots were triggered after claims that a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindus at Godhra, killing 59 people. A subsequent official report said the train fire was an accident.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050614/wl_sthasia_afp/indiagujaratunrest_050614045545
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse.