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The mounting deaths and injuries to civilian contractors in Iraq could cost the federal government millions of dollars for hundreds of workers’ compensation claims.
Federal law requires all U.S. government contractors and subcontractors to obtain workers’ compensation insurance for civilian employees who work overseas. If an injury or death claim is related to a "war-risk hazard," the War Hazards Compensation Act provides for government reimbursement to insurance carriers.
Nearly half (…)

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is reportedly suffering from wounds he sustained during physical torture by his American jailors, a Jordanian paper said.
The daily al-Arab al-Yom said Wednesday that it received a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross indicating that Saddam suffered physical and psychological torture during detention.
The paper did not say how it got the report, which the Red Cross usually keeps confidential.
ICRC inspectors have twice visited (…)

U S Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered at least one inmate of an Iraqi detention center to be kept off the prison’s rolls, The New York Times reported today effectively making the prisoner a so-called ’’ghost detainee’’.
Quoting senior Pentagon and intelligence officials, the paper said the prisoner, suspected of being a high-value terrorist, was hidden along with other ’’ghost detainees’’, largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their (…)

Middle east online
NY Times calls on Bush to apologize for waging war on Iraq American daily accuses Bush of selling false link between al-Qaeda and Iraq in 9/11 attacks to Americans.
WASHINGTON - The New York Times on Thursday called on President George W. Bush to apologize to the American people for going to war on Iraq after an official probe into the September 11 attacks found no evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.
"Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who (…)

CURT ANDERSON, AP
WASHINGTON Rebuffing U.S. government claims, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said yesterday no evidence exists that al-Qaida had strong ties to deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. In hair-raising detail, the commission said the terror network had envisioned a much larger attack and is working hard to strike again.
Although Osama bin Laden asked for help from Iraq in the mid-1990s, Saddam’s government never responded, according to (…)

Terry Jones, The Guardian
For some time now, I’ve been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it’s no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it’s a free country. Now it may be a free country, but if people start going just anywhere they like after choir practice, goodness knows whether we’ll have a country left to be free. I mean, he might be going to anarchist meetings or Islamic study groups. How do I know?
The (…)

Dahr Jamail
I haven’t slept very well the last couple of nights, as the growing anxiety of car bombs has me waking at the smallest noises outside my window nowadays.
Dave was typing on his computer as I walk past him to the kitchen to make some coffee at 8:15 this morning and a huge explosion rumbles down the street near Tharir Square.
“Morning, man,” I said. “Morning,” he replied as we both stare at the huge, brown mushroom cloud that rises above the buildings out our window.
Our (…)

Joshua Chaffin
Washington, June 15 2004 - A group of former Halliburton employees who have highlighted the company’s wasteful practices in Iraq will be asked to testify before a congressional committee next month.
The decision to invite the Halliburton whistleblowers sets up an embarrassing public hearing for the oilfield services company formerly headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Sworn statements that they have provided to lawmakers offer salacious details of $85,000 (?70,000, (…)

Tabassum Zakaria , Reuters
The CIA has decided that about one-third of a U.S. Senate report criticizing prewar intelligence on Iraq contains secret information that should not be released to the public, intelligence sources said on Tuesday.
After reviewing the roughly 400 pages for classified data, the intelligence agency returned the report to the Senate Intelligence Committee with brackets around 30 percent to 40 percent of the contents to signal the information was secret, (…)

Kim Sengupta and Marie Woolf, The Independent
The shocking photographs of abuse of Iraqi prisoners that led to charges against British troops could become public during their court martial.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is considering releasing the images, which are said to show Iraqi inmates being forced to perform sexual acts on each other and a naked prisoner, bound and gagged, suspended in a net from a forklift truck. The photographs, allegedly taken as "trophy" pictures, form the (…)