contributions

by Paul McGeough
Amman. The International Committee of the Red Cross had urged an investigation of the brutal treatment of prisoners at the Baghdad prison where Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, is alleged to have executed as many as six suspected insurgents.
The Red Cross request was made six months before the killings were said to have taken place at the maximum security Al-Amariyah police station prison.
Almost a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, a report by the Red Cross (…)

by Tim Mclaughlin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Attention Iraqi cell-phone users: Your calls soon will be forwarded to Big Brother.
A unit of Engineered Support Systems Inc. said Tuesday that it has landed a $31 million contract to help install a big listening post in and around Baghdad to help Iraqi police and U.S. intelligence agents monitor cell-phone traffic. The surveillance network will be able to track 360 cell-phone calls at once, said David R. Gust, president of Tamsco of Calverton, (…)

Four civilians in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi have been killed in fighting between US occupation forces and resistance fighters.
Another four civilians were injured in the fighting, hospital sources told Aljazeera’s correspondent Hossam Ali.
Fierce battles erupted again on Thursday, a day after fighting left 25 resistance fighters dead, according to a US military statement.
Seven Iraqis, including three national guardsmen, were wounded during clashes that erupted on Haifa road (…)

by MATT KELLEY
The U.S. military has found 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army’s inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.
The Pentagon had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations since the prisoner abuse scandal broke this spring. The 94 number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by (…)

Rampant violence continued across Iraq, killing at least 25 people, including six US soldiers, during the past 24 hours.
Twelve people, including a US soldier, were killed in a series of attacks in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and other known militant trouble-spots.
At least four people were killed when a car bomb ripped through a residential neighbourhood in Baghdad, according to the interior ministry.
Two others were killed and four wounded when a missile ripped through the seventh (…)

by Maha Zimmo
"Powell stood before the world and declared the existence of WMD undeniable, based not on definitive evidence, but on one potentially drunk person’s unsubstantiated allegations. Worse still, this testimony was not something the American intelligence agencies received directly, but rather one achieved through another foreign government. And so, ladies and gentlemen, one of the ways in which the case for war was manufactured was done so by playing ’broken telephone’ (these (…)

by Tom Lasseter
RAMADI, Iraq - Scaling back the military and political goals in Iraq’s Anbar province has hurt the morale of many U.S. soldiers stationed there, and some have begun to question openly not only their mission, but also the leaders who sent them to Iraq in the first place.
It’s not just buck privates. Several sergeants - the backbone of the enlisted military - said they felt the same way.
Instead of neighborhood patrols, most of the convoys that leave the bases in Ramadi (…)

At least five Iraqis have been killed in Ramadi, a doctor in a city hospital said.
The doctor Iyad Muhammad said they included three brothers who were killed on Wednesday in their car by a roadside bomb planted to target US patrols.
In other incidents on Wednesday, at least 12 people including a US soldier were killed in a string of attacks in Baghdad.
At least four people were killed when a car bomb ripped through a residential neighbourhood, sending body parts hurtling onto the roof (…)

11267/04 Brussels, 7 July 2004
CORDROGUE 59
I/A ITEM NOTE
from: General Secretariat to : COREPER/Council
<> 1. At its meeting of 6 July 2004 the Horizontal Working Party on Drugs reached agreement on a draft Council Resolution on Cannabis as contained in annex.
2. On this basis COREPER is asked to invite Council to approve the draft Council Resolution on Cannabis as set out in annex. <>
ANNEX COUNCIL RESOLUTION ON CANNABIS
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, <>
I. (…)

By Barry Grey
It took the New York Times six days to respond editorially and publish more than a news brief on the revelation that the Bush administration had initiated internal discussions on the possible cancellation of the November presidential election.
Newsweek magazine broke the story on Sunday, July 11, revealing that the Homeland Security Department had requested a detailed analysis from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel on the legal basis for postponing the (…)