contributions

By Andrew Buncombe
Tomorrow for the first time since the Second World War, America will start a series of military tribunals to prosecute four of the 600 prisoners it is holding at Guantanamo Bay.
The US insists the tribunals will be fair, and are the appropriate way to deal with prisoners that President George Bush described as "killers" and his Attorney General, John Ashcroft called "uniquely dangerous".
But human rights groups and legal campaigners have condemned the hearings as (…)

’Staggering Amount’ Of Cash Missing In Iraq
By Emad Mekay WASHINGTON - Three U.S. senators have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to account for 8.8 billion dollars entrusted to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq earlier this year but now gone missing. In a letter Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Byron L Dorgan of North Dakota and Tom Harkin of Iowa, all opposition Democrats, demanded a "full, written account" of the money that was channeled to Iraqi (…)

By Thane Peterson
John Kerry returned a hero. The smears his political enemies are now flinging mark them — not him — as beneath contempt
The next time the nation gets into a war, why would any American with an interest in national service show up to fight? When did the U.S. come to blithely accept the tarring for political gain of honorably discharged combat veterans? Obviously, I’m talking about the attacks on John Kerry by a bunch of angry, Bush-backing Vietnam-war vets who claim the (…)

The 115-member developing states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), meeting in South Africa at the weekend, has condemned Israel’s "Apartheid Wall," saying it infringes Palestinians’ rights, and urged all of its members to act ³individually or collectively" to impose sanctions both against Israeli settlements and international companies that participate in settlement activity, including construction of the Wall.
The decision of the Non-Aligned Movement followed a non-binding ruling (…)

By YANAR MOHAMMED
Life in Baghdad in these days is nerve wracking. It is so hard to keep your sanity through one more night of bombing. The explosions, the machine guns all around your house at night, the many times you jump up and down because it feels as if the last gun shot came from your own bedroom.
Nobody deserves to live like this.
Al Jazeera tv bombards us with the numbers and scenes of those of us who are killed each daythe children who don’t have the slightest idea why they (…)

IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole. After all, Dole was given a Purple Heart for a leg scratch probably caused, according to one biographer, when a hand grenade thrown by one of his own men bounced off a tree. And while the serious injuries Dole sustained later surely came from German fire, did the episode demonstrate heroism on Dole’s part or a reckless move that ended up killing his radioman and endangering the (…)

ROANOKE, Virginia (CNN) — A volunteer adviser has quit President Bush’s re-election campaign after appearing in a veterans group’s television commercial blasting Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s involvement in the Vietnam-era antiwar movement.
A Bush campaign statement said it did not know that retired Air Force Col. Ken Cordier had appeared in an ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Kerry campaign has accused the group of illegally working with the Bush campaign.
As a (…)

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON - President Bush will present what aides say will be a detailed second-term agenda when he is nominated in New York in 10 days, part of an ambitious convention program built on invocations of Sept. 11 and efforts to paint Senator John Kerry as untrustworthy and out of the mainstream.
Mr. Bush’s advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in (…)

Gap Grows Between Hard Data, Projections for Covering 10 Million Uninsured
By Ceci Connolly
If the Republican-controlled Congress enacted President Bush’s entire health care agenda, as many as 10 million people who lack health insurance would be covered at a cost of $102 billion over the next decade, according to his campaign aides.
But when the Bush-Cheney team was asked to provide documentation, the hard data fell far short of the claims, a gap supported by several independent (…)

by Paul Craig Roberts
Now it is out: "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is just a political dirty trick operation financed by multimillionaire supporters of President George W. Bush. According to the August 20 New York Times, "a series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush’s chief political aide, Karl Rove. Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men (…)