contributions

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
Occupation authorities in Iraq have awarded a $293 million contract effectively creating the world’s largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the SAS, an elite regiment of British commandos, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world. On May 25, the Army Transportation command awarded (…)

By Monte Hayes, Associated Press Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/161/world/Officials_from_around_the_Amer:.shtml QUITO, Ecuador (AP) Despite initial objections from the United States and Haiti, the Organization of American States opened the way for an investigation into the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The OAS General Assembly also called for elections in Haiti as soon as possible. But the debate over a probe into Aristide’s ouster went for hours (…)

THE BUSH administration assures the country, and the world, that it is complying with U.S. and international laws banning torture and maltreatment of prisoners. But, breaking with a practice of openness that had lasted for decades, it has classified as secret and refused to disclose the techniques of interrogation it is using on foreign detainees at U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a matter of grave concern because the use of some of the methods that have (…)

The Wall Street Journal has released the text of the now-infamous March 6, 2003 Defense Department memo regarding legal liability for torture. The conclusions reached advised President Bush and Pentagon officials that prohibitions against torture do not apply to the "war on terrorism."
The file is available here in .pdf format by Human Rights Watch
The Bush administration should immediately explain who reviewed and approved a high-level classified Pentagon memorandum that sought to (…)

June 9, 2004 - Saboteurs have blown up a portion of the Kirkuk-Turkey oil pipeline, the second such attack in less than 24-hours, an Iraqi security chief in northern Iraq says.
"A bomb placed 80 kilometres west of Kirkuk exploded at 8:20am [local time] on the main pipeline to the Ceyhan terminal," Iraqi Civil Defence Corps chief Anwar Hamed Amin said.
Northern Oil Company fire chief Jumaa Ahamd says the pipeline to Turkey is still ablaze.
Earlier, saboteurs ruptured a pipeline linking (…)

By MIKE WHITNEY
"THE GENEVA Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution."
This is the opening passage of Alan Dershowitz’s attack on the Geneva Conventions. It sets the tone for a polemic that savages our continued commitment to the humane treatment of prisoners (…)

By JOEL BRINKLEY
WASHINGTON, June 8 — Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990’s to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.
Dr. Allawi’s group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. (…)

By Joe Murphy, Evening Standard Political Editor
The Prime Minister shifted tack on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction again today - fuelling doubts that hard evidence of their existence will ever be found.
Challenged whether he believed pre-war intelligence about Iraqi arms was accurate, Tony Blair said he was convinced evidence would confirm Saddam’s "complete determination" to obtain illegal weapons.
The form of words marked another marked change in his language on the (…)

By Robert Kuttner
WHAT HAVE we learned so far about officially sponsored torture by the US government?
First, it is unambiguously clear that the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, and at Abu Ghraib was official policy. Lawyers for the Pentagon and the White House, reporting directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush, wrote contorted legal briefs trying to define a category of person immune to both due process of law and the Third Geneva Convention. (…)

Tomm W. Christiansen/Dagbladet Iraqis picked up for looting weapons were marched naked through a park into a building after their clothes were burned by American troops in April 2003. They were then freed and chased naked onto the street.
SEXUAL HUMILIATION
By KATE ZERNIKE and DAVID ROHDE
In the weeks since photographs of naked detainees set off the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, military officials have portrayed the sexual humiliation captured in the images as the isolated acts of a (…)