contributions

Despite a well-documented picture of under-reported sexualized violence, the major media has not shown any interest in pursuing cases of rape or abuse of Iraqi women by the US military. Instead, two stories about hoaxes or more accurately apparent hoaxes made the rounds earlier this year. They’re worth looking at to better understand what’s behind the seemingly artless way in which hoaxes and allegations of hoaxes creep into the factual history of abuse in Iraq.
On May 4, 2004, just when (…)

by Naomi Klein
Last month, I reluctantly joined the Anybody But Bush camp. It was "Bush in a Box" that finally got me, a gag gift my brother gave my father on his sixty-sixth birthday. Bush in a Box is a cardboard cutout of President 43 with a set of adhesive speech balloons featuring the usual Bushisms: "Is our children learning?" "They misunderestimated me"—standard-issue Bush-bashing schlock, on sale at Wal-Mart, made in Malaysia.
Yet Bush in a Box filled me with despair. It’s not (…)

By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City
First the prisoners were stripped naked at gunpoint and forced to lie down face first on the freezing concrete floor with their hands locked behind their heads for hours on end while guards took turns walking over them. The women too were ordered to disrobe under the leering gazes of male guards and locked into a basement room where they were threatened with rape and sodomy.
One by one, the prisoners were taken out for interrogation and when they refused to (…)

Dems Should Be The Anti-War Party
August 4, 2004
Kerry: Reporting For Duty
By suffocating their own passion, they may lose the energy that has brought them this far. They have confronted Bush’s policy of denial with a politics of avoidance. Bush is adamant in error; they are feeble in dedication to truth.
(The Nation) This column from The Nation was written by Jonathan Schell. "During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current President, the Vice President and me, could (…)

There have been: 1,041 coalition deaths
– 919 Americans
– 61 Britons
– 19 Italians
– 11 Spaniards
– seven Ukrainians
– six Bulgarians
– three Slovaks
– two Thai
– one Dane
– one Dutch
– one Estonian
– one Hungarian
– one Latvian-
– seven Poles-
– one Salvadoran
in the war in Iraq as of August 3, 2004 (Graphical breakdown of casualties).
The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose families have been notified of their (…)

By Caroline Drees
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration insists its terror warnings should be taken in deadly earnest, but many Americans feel political motives, faulty intelligence and the "cry wolf" factor may be clouding their credibility.
"The security of the United States and potential terror threats are being perceived by some as a tool to garner political support," said Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"The average American (…)

By Ted Bridis
WASHINGTON - The government is no closer to understanding some important details about possible terror plots against American financial institutions, intelligence and law enforcement officials acknowledge.
Investigators are poring over the trove of documents and photographs that led to this week’s urgent warnings from the Homeland Security Department. But intelligence agencies have been unable to reach a consensus on whether the unusually detailed documents recovered in (…)

Questioned at gunpoint, shackled, forced to pose naked. British detainees tell their stories of Guantánamo Bay
Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
Britain and the US last night faced fresh allegations of abuses after a British terror suspect said an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours while an American colleague pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him.
The allegation is contained in a new dossier detailing repeated beatings and humiliation suffered by three Britons who (…)

By Malia Rulon WASHINGTON The government will no longer reveal security gaps discovered at nuclear power plants, hoping to prevent terrorists from using the information, regulators said Wednesday.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the change in policy during its first public meeting on power plant safety since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It drew barbs from critics who said the secrecy would erode public confidence in the agency.
Until now, the NRC has provided (…)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Denmark’s defense minister dismissed the country’s two top military commanders in Iraq yesterday as an inquiry widened into charges that a Danish officer had abused Iraqi detainees.
Defense Minister Soeren Gade said he relieved Col. Henrik Flach, head of the country’s 496-person unit in southern Iraq, of command "because of lack of judgment." The unit’s executive officer, Lt. Col. Poul Erik Andersen, also was dismissed.
However, Gade said the dismissals were (…)