contributions

NOTE: THIS IS A WORKING DRAFT FOR COMMENT, AND IS PART OF THE AWOL PROJECT, A LARGE SERIES OF ARTICLES EXAMINING BUSH¡¦S MILITARY RECORDS WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE FEDERAL STATUTES, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REGULATIONS, AND AIR FORCE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES OF THAT ERA. COMMENTS, CORRECTIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO awol@glcq.com. DESERTER THE STORY OF GEORGE W. BUSH (…)

By Hannah Baldock
The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, looked to be losing his grip on power last night as exit polls showed him to be trailing the opposition by almost a million votes.
The figures were early indications that, for the first time in the country’s history, the President may have his term in office cut short by a referendum.
The mid-morning results showed that the opposition, already boasting an enormous 1,758,000 votes to Chavez’s 798,000, is well on its way to (…)

Venezuela extended polling hours for a referendum on whether to recall President Hugo Chavez after voters waited in line more than six hours to cast their ballots.
Polls will close at 8 p.m. (8 p.m. New York time), four hours later than originally planned, because of a high turnout, National Electoral Council Vice President Jorge Rodriguez said in a televised press conference in Caracas. New fingerprint scanners, put in place to guard against fraud, also contributed to delays.
I put my (…)

The gunmen who kidnapped the British journalist James Brandon from his hotel late on Thursday probably had no idea they would have to release him a few hours later. Nor, I suspect, did James Brandon. The foreigners taken, both by insurgents and by the common criminals who have flourished since the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, have suffered various fates. Some have been ransomed. Others have been murdered. Many have been held and released without explanation. Almost all have been used for (…)

by TIM RIPLEY
WHEN troopers of the US 101st Airborne Division first entered the Iraqi city of Najaf 17 months ago, they were greeted by huge and welcoming crowds chanting "Die Saddam, die".
This weekend, the same streets are littered with the debris from over a week’s sustained and bloody combat. Empty shell cases and burnt-out vehicles have replaced the flowers and flags of welcome.
A one-day truce to allow peace negotiations ended yesterday with hostilities expected to resume at any (…)

The uprising against US troops in Najaf is causing further divisions among many Iraqis, who are fed up with fighting, reports Rory McCarthy, who has been in the holy Shia city for the past week
In the darkness an hour before dawn the floodlights snapped on, shining into the tiled courtyard of the ancient Imam Ali shrine in the heart of the old city of Najaf. Silently, streams of militia fighters left their weapons and walked into the mosque, led by the call to prayer.
They washed their (…)

By Cahal Milmo and Anne Penketh
The grainy video footage that flashed around the world shortly after 8.30am yesterday followed a chillingly familiar script a masked captor threatening to kill his frightened, half-naked hostage.
For 18 hours, it was the terrifying fate of James Brandon, 23, a British journalist working for The Sunday Telegraph, to be the latest victim of Iraq’s spree of kidnappings after gunmen burst into his hotel room in Basra on Thursday night and dragged him in to (…)

Mortar bombs have claimed at least one life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, shaking the building where the Iraqi National Conference is under way.
Moments after the blasts, organisers of the conference on Sunday screamed at participants to get away from the windows of the convention centre.
The Health Ministry said 17 were also wounded when one mortar fell in the Allawi district near Haifa Street , one of the areas included in a government curfew imposed as a security measure because of the (…)

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Once again, US armed forces appear on the verge of winning a decisive military victory in Iraq - this time in the holy city of Najaf. And once again, they appear closer to losing the larger wars for a stable and friendly Iraq and for an Islamic world that will cease producing anti-US terrorism.
That is the rapidly growing concern of Middle East and Islamic specialists as US Marines, after a week of fighting, captured virtually all of central Najaf on Thursday, (…)

By Julian Coman
A Pentagon report on prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison is being labelled a whitewash before it has even been released.
The report is the result of the internal inquiry launched by Gen George Fay in April after the now notorious images of mistreated Iraqi prisoners were broadcast around the world. Critics are arguing that its final conclusions, some of which were leaked last week to the Baltimore Sun, amount to a deliberate cover-up to protect senior military and (…)