contributions

Even as hundreds of Iraqis came out on streets in support of ousted President Saddam Hussein in the town of Baquba, at least 10 people, including 8 American soldiers, were killed during the past 24 hours across Iraq, reports reaching here said on Monday.
In the first incident, a vehicle accident near the flashpoint city of Fallujah killed four US Marines, a military spokesman said. "The deaths were as a result of a vehicle accident in the Camp Fallujah area and are considered non-hostile," (…)

Memo To: Karl Rove From: Jude Wanniski Re: Tom Ridge
Of all the people close to the President, Karl, you know best that I had been warning from the start that Saddam had no WMD and was no threat to anyone. Unlike George Tenet of the CIA, I had done my homework, and every piece of evidence I developed I sent to you and to Dick Cheney and his staff. Now that President Bush looks like a loser in November, because all of you ignored my counsel, I can only say your only chance of winning (…)

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.
The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee’s review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.
According to dramatic (…)

By Severin Carrell
British soldiers are facing prosecution in 12 cases where Iraqi civilians are alleged to have been illegally killed or assaulted - a significant jump in the previously disclosed figure.
Defence ministers have revealed that the Army Prosecuting Authority is studying dossiers in nine cases where troops allegedly shot or mistreated Iraqis. The APA - the military equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service - has already sent two cases for courts martial and a third is (…)

By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, July 11 - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is nearing completion of a final, probably unanimous report that will stand by the conclusions of the panel’s staff and largely dismiss White House theories both about a close working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda and about possible Iraqi involvement in Sept. 11, commission officials said.
The report, which is expected to be made public several days before the panel’s mandated deadline of (…)

The US Department of Defence reports several US soldiers killed and wounded in separate incidents throughout Iraq.
Two US soldiers were killed and three wounded when their convoy was targeted in a roadside bomb blast on Sunday near the Iraqi town of Samarra, the US military said.
"Two 1st Infantry Division soldiers assigned to Task Force Danger were killed and three other soldiers were wounded in an improvised explosive device attack on their convoy near Samarra at about 16:29 (12:29 (…)

Tony Blair’s claim that Saddam Hussein posed a ’current and serious’ threat to Britain is challenged by dramatic new allegations today that Britain’s spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence on which it was based.
The supposed proof that the Iraqi dictator was still trying, even in the run-up to war, to produce chemical and biological weapons became crucial to the Prime Minister’s case for urgent military action rather than waiting for inspectors to finish their task.
Yet, according to (…)

I am not a CIA operative or connected with that failed organization or any other government spy game failure. I am an individual who wishes to help those that need help. To murder innocent people to gain freedom is not the way. I am not there to protect the obelisks of conquer nations but to free the people from the nations of the conquers.
The Chinese government is one of those nations. Look around you and see SARS, AIDS, Poverty, and the separation of the beggars that come to the cities (…)

by Naomi Klein
There is a remarkable scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 when Lila Lipscomb talks with an anti-war activist outside the White House about the death of her 26-year-old son in Iraq. A pro-war passerby doesn’t like what she overhears and announces, "This is all staged!"
Ms. Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with rage, and says: "My son is not a stage. He was killed in Karbala, April 2. It is not a stage. My son is dead." Then she walks away and wails, "I need my son." (…)

by Robert Fisk
AWAD’S job yesterday was to find The Independent a new fir tree - or at least some foliage which would colour the sun-bleached balcony of the paper’s office in Baghdad. The fine little Christmas fir which graced the apartment had, despite promises of constant watering by colleagues, turned into a black, carbonised tree of tiny dark prickles. So it was that I set forth for the market garden behind Palestine Street, a place that reeks of hot flowers and undergrowth and pot (…)