contributions

As judges consider the Army’s conduct, Severin Carrell examines the accusations, and describes how six people met their deaths
More than a year after the Iraq war was declared over, and 10 months since Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist, was allegedly kicked and beaten to death by members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, the first legal challenge to the conduct of British forces in Iraq will be heard in the High Court this week.
The death of Mousa last September while in the (…)

Majorities that are frustrated when courts stand up for minority rights have occasionally tried to strip them of the power to do so. This week, the House voted to deny the federal courts the ability to decide a key constitutional issue involving gay marriage. Such a law would upset the system of checks and balances and threaten all minority groups. It is critical that the Senate reject it.
The Marriage Protection Act, which was passed by the House, 233-to-194, would bar federal courts from (…)

by David Corn
The final report of the 9/11 commission confirms many of the panel’s preliminary findings that have—or should have—embarrassed the Bush administration. The commission does note, "Our aim has not been to assign individual blame. Our aim has been to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify lessons learned." And it is true that the report does point to screw-ups and negligent policymaking committed during both the Bush II and Clinton (…)

By R. Jeffrey Smith
One week after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, White House counterterrorism director Paul Kurtz wrote in a memo to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that no "compelling case" existed for Iraq’s involvement in the attacks and that links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government were weak.
Not only did Osama bin Laden resent the Iraqi government’s secularism, Kurtz’s classified memo stated, but there was no confirmed (…)

by Uri Avnery
The strategy of Sharon and his generals is simple and brutal: to destroy the Palestinian Authority, turn life in the occupied territories into hell, disintegrate Palestinian society and drive the survivors from the country, not in one dramatic sweep (as in 1948) but in a slow, continuous, creeping process."
I am writing this with an aching heart. I have postponed writing it as long as I could.
In Jewish tradition, there is a searing phrase: "The Temple was not destroyed (…)

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s call on French Jewry to immigrate en masse to Israel because of anti-Semitism and because "ten percent of the French population is Muslim" has caused a major storm in France. The editorial of Le Figaro condemned the call twice, "first because France is not anti-Semitic, and second, because he knows that it is not anti-Semitic." Jews have been attacked and are being attacked, wrote Charles Lambroschini, the editorialist, but France’s policies are not (…)

by Doug Ireland
Remember how congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle deplored the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as "un-American"? Last Thursday, however, the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.’s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years.
A (…)

By Adam Entous
Some of President Bush’s missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave.
His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush’s Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam War (…)

Shia firebrand denounces Iraqi PM
Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr has delivered his first public sermon in two months, denouncing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Speaking at Friday prayers in Kufa mosque, the Shia leader said Mr Allawi had proved that he was only continuing the US-led occupation.
In his first sermon for two months, Mr Sadr also condemned the beheading of foreign hostages seized by militants.
He said such acts would be punished according to Islamic law.
Mr (…)

THE ARMY’S attempt to hold itself accountable for the abuse of foreign prisoners is off to a terrible start. On Thursday, while the media and political worlds were focused on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the Army inspector general released a 300-page summary of an investigation of "detainee operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it identified 94 cases of confirmed or possible abuse, including 20 prisoner deaths, the probe concluded by sounding the defense offered up by the (…)