contributions

By SAUL LANDAU
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21. The United States, the most Christian nation on earth, has placed its treasure in destruction and death. As Associated Press’ Dan Morgan reports (June 12 2004, Tallahassee Democrat), the Pentagon “plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism.” (…)

by Heather Wokusch
Despite the president’s campaign pledge that "W stands for Woman," Bush tends to bomb out with the fairer sex. Unsurprisingly, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has registered women voters favoring Kerry over Bush by a full 12 percentage points.
So it’s no wonder that the Bush campaign is working overtime to nab critical female voters, enlisting wife Laura and various female administration members to carry Bush’s message from the (…)

Amman, Jordan, Jun. 29 (UPI) — Jordan’s opposition parties, led by the Islamic Action front, Tuesday ridiculed the power handover in Iraq as a comedy and fiction.
A statement signed by 14 opposition groups said "the power transfer is nothing more than a comedy or play produced by the occupation authority which appointed its players and (determined) its mission."
"The new Iraqi authority has no legitimacy because there should be no legitimacy to any institution imposed by the occupation," (…)

Occupation Authorities Stash Oil Funds as Iraqi Health Care Dies
By Christopher Bollyn
Iraqi children perish for want of medicines and equipment in Iraq’s under-funded hospitals while U.S. Treasury officials have billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues stashed away in secondary “slush funds” and U.S. Treasury bills.
President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that Iraqi oil revenues are to be used solely for the benefit of the Iraqi people. At a White House press conference on April (…)

By PAUL KRUGMAN
June 29, 2004 - The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it’s already worth asking why things went so wrong.
The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we’ll never know for (…)

The overt United States occupation phase of Iraq came to a close on June 28, but its stealthy phase is still continuing. The holding of the transfer of sovereignty ceremony two days earlier than its original deadline of June 30, and the decision to keep it short and simple, were in recognition of the extremely precarious security situation that prevails in Iraq. If it was the beginning of a momentous chapter in Iraq, the secretive, quiet and an uneventful departure of the former Iraqi (…)

Confusion over armed soldiers’ intervention
Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
American military police yesterday raided a building belonging to the Iraqi ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being physically abused by Iraqi interrogators.
The raid appeared to be a violation of the country’s new sovereignty, leading to angry scenes inside the ministry between Iraqi policemen and US soldiers.
The military police, who had been told of abuse, seized an area known as the (…)

Palestinians think so, but Shin Bet interrogators scoff at U.S. methods
Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem — Palestinians who have spent time in Israeli detention say the images of sexual abuse and humiliation from Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison are painful reminders of their own experience at the hands of Israeli interrogators.
Some, like Hisham Abdel Razzaq, the Palestinian minister for prisoners, believe the similarity is more than coincidental.
"I am inclined to think that the Americans (…)

LONDON - All prisoners held in Iraq must be released after the handover of sovereignty and any further detentions by the US-led coalition would be illegal, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Monday.
“The USA has announced that it intends to continue to hold, without charge, between 4,000 and 5,000 detainees without clarifying on what legal basis it will do so,” the group said.
“Yet if, as the UN resolution (1546) proclaims, occupation effectively ends with the handover, (…)

By EDWARD WONG
BAQUBA, Iraq, June 27 — At a teahouse in this palm-lined city, jobless men sit on wooden benches talking about killing American soldiers.
"Tell us one benefit they’ve given us since they’ve come here," Falah, a 23-year-old man in a shabby checkered shirt, said to an Iraqi reporter.
He boasted about driving a friend to stage attacks on American patrols. The two wait in a farm field by the main road. When the Humvees roll by, his friend fires a rocket-propelled grenade, (…)