contributions

The Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Diaspora rejoiced and took to the streets to celebrate justice, following the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that deemed the Israeli Apartheid Wall illegal.
Throughout the Palestinian provinces, massive demonstrations were organized to condemn the Wall and to assert on adopting the ICJ’s advisory opinion by a resolution from the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
In Ramallah, (…)

The death of Marlon Brando last week revived painful memories of the actor’s controversial appearance on "Larry King Live" on April 5, 1996, in which he criticized Jewish Hollywood moguls for their seeming insensitivity to blacks and other minorities. The interview, coming at a time when public criticism of Jewish influence still was mercifully rare, caused shock and outrage. Community leaders charged that in saying "the Jews" ran Hollywood, Brando was resurrecting a dangerous canard. (…)

By NEIL A. LEWIS
An estimated 20 percent of a Senate committee’s report on faulty Iraq intelligence was deleted at the request of the C.I.A., Congressional officials said Friday. The deletions have renewed a debate about whether Central Intelligence Agency officials were trying to suppress certain information to avoid embarrassment.
The C.I.A. originally asked that about half the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report be blacked out. However, the Congressional officials said that while (…)

by Marian Wilkinson
The depth of the CIA’s distortions over WMDs has been revealed, Marian Wilkinson writes.
The day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, delivered his critical speech to the United Nations saying Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons laboratories, a US intelligence agent warned the CIA that the evidence had come from an Iraqi defector called Curve Ball who was unreliable and possibly an alcoholic.
Despite that warning, the CIA did not change Powell’s (…)

Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government cannot escape any blame levelled at intelligence services over mistakes made about Iraq’s weaponry in the run-up to war, according to a former British spy chief.
Former top civil servant Lord Butler will deliver a report next Wednesday on the intelligence the government received about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. It is expected to criticise Britain’s spymasters and some government figures.
It follows a scathing US Senate committee report on (…)

By Damien McElroy and Aqeel Hussein in Samarra
The attack was as brazen as it was meticulously-planned. Under the gaze of an old Iraqi general wearing a Saddam Hussein-era olive-green uniform, a disciplined force of former soldiers unleashed a 90-minute mortar barrage on a United States base on the edge of Samarra.
The onslaught, witnessed last week by The Sunday Telegraph, claimed the lives of five American troops and six Iraqis in the most daring raid yet launched by Saddam loyalists (…)

BY T. CHRISTIAN MILLER AND MAURA REYNOLDS
Friday’s Senate report on intelligence on Iraq drew a new battle line in this fall’s presidential campaign by failing to settle perhaps the most controversial question of all: Did the White House pressure the CIA to concoct reasons to invade Iraq?
The question split the Senate Intelligence Committee’s otherwise bipartisan unanimity on the intelligence failures in Iraq, with Democrats saying they had a "major disagreement" with Republicans over (…)

By Scott Ritter
The Iraqi resistance has been years in the making. And with the help of American involvement, the insurgency will continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it.
The battle for Iraq’s sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things currently stand, it appears that victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.
Iyad Allawi’s government was (…)

by Sam Hamod
I think it’s about time that someone told the American people how the Iraqis see it. I am not talking about the puppet regime installed by Bush, that was opposed, and is still opposed by the Iraqi people, Brahimi and the experts at the UN and in the US State Department, but about the vast majority of non-Kurd Iraqis (over 90% of the country).
The American troops are colonial occupiers, similar to the old British colonialists who tried to run Iraq in the past. They feel our (…)

Senate Report Faults 2002 Estimate Sent To Hill, Accuses the CIA of ’Group-Think’
By Dana Priest and Dafna Linzer
The U.S. intelligence community gave lawmakers debating whether to wage war on Iraq a deeply flawed and exaggerated assessment of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, according to the results of a year-long, bipartisan Senate investigation released yesterday.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said either the intelligence community "overstated" the (…)