contributions

In asymmetrical war, the most vulnerable will always be on the frontline
by Isabel Hilton
It descended into blood, panic, violence and tragedy. None of the children, parents and teachers killed and wounded in Beslan deserved this barbarism. The children who set off for the first day of school on Wednesday, wearing their new clothes and holding their balloons, could not have been a more innocent target, the anguish of their teachers and parents more undeserved.
Beslan is an extreme (…)

by Uri Avnery*
At the mass meeting with Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma, in Abu-Dis, I observed the faces of the participants. While Gandhi was preaching non-violence, I imagined a debate between two young Palestinians in the audience.
Yussuf: “He is right. The armed intifada has failed.
Hassan: “On the contrary. Without the actions of the martyrs, the world would have forgotten us long ago.”
Yussuf: “For half a year there were no suicide attacks in Israel, and look what we (…)

By Michelle Grattan
Fifty-six of the nation’s most eminent doctors will today drag Iraq back onto the election stage with an open letter accusing the Government of taking Australia to war on "false and misleading" grounds.
They will call on an incoming Howard or Latham government to make amends for a policy they see as immoral and a "tragic mistake", and for a war still killing and injuring Iraqis without an end in sight.
The letter comes as a special Sunday Age study of voter (…)

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi militant group appealed Sunday to an influential Sunni Muslim organization for an edict on whether the kidnapping of foreigners who work for occupation forces is acceptable under Islam.
The appeal came in a video aired on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel, which showed a masked man reading a statement seeking a "fatwa" from the Association of Muslim Scholars.
"We are confident that all the Islamic resistance in Iraq will abide it if it was in the (…)

TOLEDO, Ohio — A military attorney has recommended charging a former soldier in a 1967 rampage of alleged atrocities committed by U.S. troops against hundreds of civilians in Vietnam, a newspaper reported. The Blade, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the elite Tiger Force platoon, said in its Sunday edition that the recommendation involved retired Maj. James Hawkins, 63, a former unit commander who now lives near Orlando, Fla.
Hawkins declined to comment on the military (…)

U.S. Troops See Highest Toll Yet
By Karl Vick
BAGHDAD, About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.
U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently (…)

Statement would help to heal party wounds, Prime Minister told
by Martin Bright
Tony Blair is coming under growing pressure from some of his closest aides to apologise for mistakes made during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath, The Observer can reveal.
While the Prime Minister has so far resisted the calls, aides in his inner circle believe a speech clarifying his view on weapons of mass destruction and an admission that the aftermath of the war has not gone entirely as planned would (…)

Equatorial Guinea demands handover of former PM’s son
By Raymond Whitaker in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea is willing to guarantee that it would not use the death penalty if it were allowed to extradite Sir Mark Thatcher and other British citizens it accuses of involvement in a coup plot, the country’s Attorney-General, Jose Olo Obono, has told The Independent on Sunday.
Sir Mark, freed from house arrest in Cape Town on Friday after his mother, Baroness Thatcher, put up (…)

By Kurt Nimmo
Isn’t it curious that right smack in the middle of an investigation of Israel spying on its best “friend,” Hamas pulls off back-to-back suicide bombings-after a lull of nearly six months-in Beersheba? Hamas declares the bombing was revenge for Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Rantissi was assassinated on April 17 and Yassin on March 22.
Is there a reason Hamas waited so long to take revenge? Of course there is. Hamas is essentially (…)

By BRIAN BENNETT, ELAINE SHANNON AND ADAM ZAGORIN
It was a hot, late August afternoon when the Iraqi exile got a call on his cell phone. Over the crackling line, the Iraqi says, the caller identified himself as Larry Franklin, an analyst for the Defense Department in Washington. Franklin rattled off a series of questions. He wanted to know if the Iraqi, who had spent the past decade working with Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.), could recall whether anyone at the I.N.C. had (…)