contributions

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Thursday to require Vice President Dick Cheney to disclose the records of the controversial energy task force he headed in early 2001.
The justices set aside a ruling that Cheney must comply with a federal judge’s order to produce the internal White House documents or give a detailed explanation of what was withheld and why.
The Bush administration has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers for excessive secrecy concerning the energy task force and (…)

By Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backing President Bush, Republicans in the Senate on Wednesday defeated a bid by Democrats to force the administration to release documents on the treatment of enemy combatants in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
On a party-line vote, the Senate defeated 50-46 an amendment demanding Attorney General John Ashcroft turn over documents on the interrogation and treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (…)

South Korea is trying to block Internet access to a videotape of the beheading of a South Korean hostage killed by Islamic militants in Iraq.
The gruesome killing of 33-year-old Kim Sun-il this week after Seoul rejected demands to stop sending more troops to Iraq has inflamed passions and shocked in the East Asian country.
The Ministry of Information and Communication had introduced a 24-hour emergency monitoring system in a bid to close down any Website that uploaded video footage of (…)

IF anyone needed a reminder, the brutal spate of beheadings in Iraq and Saudi Arabia further emphasised the immense moral chasm that separates America from its terrorist enemies.
The US Army is engaged in court-martial proceedings against a handful of aberrant soldiers who committed acts of brutality against Iraqi prisoners. By contrast, al-Qa’ida lionises its cadre of professional decapitators and is doubtless engaged in operational planning to sever the heads of other helpless civilian (…)

President Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday.
The documents were handed out at the White House in an effort to blunt allegations that the administration had authorized torture against al-Qaida prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I have never ordered (…)

With one week to go, 30,000 police officers face the sack amid serious shortages of staff and equipment
Rory McCarthy and Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Up to 30,000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked for being incompetent and unreliable and given a $60m payoff before the US hands over to an Iraqi government, senior British military sources said yesterday.
Many officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the (…)

By Roy Eccleston
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised hoods, the stripping of prisoners and the use of dogs to terrify inmates at Guantanamo Bay almost two years ago, documents released yesterday revealed.
The revelation was in a wad of declassified US documents that also showed President George W. Bush had claimed the right to ignore the Geneva Conventions when dealing with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
However, the Bush memo, of February 7, 2002, also said the (…)

It is secretly being screamed all over left circles. The Workers’ World Party (WWP) has splintered. This will have no importance in the news if it wasn’t for the fact that for a long time the WWP – a formation of about 300 militants nationwide — allegedly dominated ANSWER, one of the main antiwar coalitions in the US.
According to unofficial reports, the entire West Coast membership of the WWP left the organization following the discussions about the Presidential ticket of the (…)

by Jim Lobe
Unless you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other big defence, security, or construction companies, chances are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad investment, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, according to a new assessment by a progressive Washington-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In what it claims is the first comprehensive accounting of the costs of the war on the U.S., Iraq, and much of the rest of the world, IPS concludes (…)

Memo To: Attorney General John Ashcroft From: Jude Wanniski Re: Why is He Being Held at All?
I see in the papers, John, that our government has decided that we will maintain physical custody of Saddam Hussein even after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government. An anonymous official told Associated Press the reason is the Iraqis do not have a prison safe enough to hold Saddam, and I suppose there may be some concern that if the Iraqi interim government got their (…)