contributions

by Dave Zirin
Marlon Brando’s death at the age of 80 will begin a battle over how the "greatest actor of all time" will be remembered. Some will focus on his latter day isolation, his bizarre behavior, and the many personal tragedies that befell his family.
Others will focus exclusively on his iconic status, and when it comes to Brando performances, icons abound. There was the 1950s motorcycle rebel from "The Wild One" (1954), or the brutal Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (…)

Seven Iraqi national guards were killed and at least five others wounded in an attack on Saturday on a checkpoint south of Baghdad.
A senior US military official confirmed the death toll after the raid on the post near the town of Mahmudiya.
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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/486043F6-6331-4B7F-B52D-F818CA130FE9.htm

The American general formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib prison says there are signs Israelis were involved in interrogating Iraqi detainees at another facility.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was suspended in May over allegations of prisoner abuse, said she met a man who told her he was Israeli during a visit to a Baghdad intelligence center with a senior coalition general.
"I saw an individual there that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, (…)

By Ahmed Janabi
Sources close to Saddam Hussein’s family have said that calls for former Iraqi officials to form a government in exile are gaining ground.
The Egyptian international law counsel Hasan Umar told Aljazeera.net he believesthat if Ragad Saddam Hussein and former Iraqi officials form a rival government, they would shorten the life of the "Iraqi occupation".
“A government in exile would be a threat to the Iraqi interim government of Iyad Allawi that would prevent him from (…)

Washington, July 02, 2004 - A FORCE of 145,000 US troops might be needed in Iraq for as many as five years, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Richard Myers said today.
"We can do that and we’ve got plans to do that for as long as it takes, because this will be event-driven, not time-line driven," he told PBS television.
The US military said earlier in the week it would recall about 5600 troops who already served in Iraq for support and logistics duty, and General Myers said (…)

AMMAN, Jordan - Despite safety concerns, a team of lawyers that claims to represent Saddam Hussein is dispatching an envoy to Iraq to try to meet with the deposed Iraqi dictator, group members said Saturday.
"I am leaving to Iraq on Sunday, despite the risk, which I am ready to bear," Ziad Najdawi, one of 20 Jordanian and foreign lawyers appointed by Saddam’s wife, Sajida, said.
Mohammed Rashdan, who heads the defense team, told The Associated Press that they decided to dispatch Najdawi (…)

London, July 3, 2004 - A team of United States military officers acted as censors over all coverage of the hearings of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, destroying videotape of Saddam in chains and deleting the entire recorded legal submissions of 11 senior members of his former regime.
An American network cameraman who demanded the return of his tapes said he was told by a US officer: "No. They belong to us now. And anyway, we don’t trust you guys."
According to American journalists, a (…)

by Sanjay Suri
LONDON - Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.
Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 toward the end of Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of (…)

by Yamin Zakaria
The fanatical Western media driven by ulterior motives is not interested to discuss the real war crimes committed by Bush and Blair despite such clear evidences. Hence like the UN Security Council the democratic nations of the US and UK has a veto and total immunity on this point of war crimes."
A good description of a cunning fanatic is one who would always construe the evidence to support the conviction rather than establish it by objectively assessing the facts. (…)

“The Iraqi people have their country back,” proclaimed President Bush at the June 28 NATO conclave in Turkey. Shortly before, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice had slipped him a note: “Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign,” upon which he scrawled a message, crafted for the history books “Let freedom reign!”
When it comes to Iraq, Bush has a demonstrated penchant for embellishment. The official news from Baghdad was that the Coalitional Provisional Authority (CPA) Administrator L. Paul (…)