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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=463502
Independent 14 November 2003
The hidden cost of Bush’s war
Concern about fatalities among Western forces in Iraq tends to overlook another ghastly statistic: the spectacularly mounting toll of the severely wounded. Andrew Buncombe reports on America’s invisible army of maimed and crippled servicemen
It has been three months since Sergeant Mike Meinen lost his right leg in Iraq and just two weeks since he received (…)

A report found more civilians there are supporting the resistance. It conflicts with upbeat public assessments.
By Jonathan S. Landay Inquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - A new, top-secret CIA report from Iraq warns that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding the U.S.-led coalition can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents.
The report paints a bleak picture of the political and security situation in Iraq and cautions that the U.S.- led drive to rebuild the country as a (…)

By David Morgan
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.
A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American (…)

An Open Invitation To A General Assembly Of The Global Anti-War Movement
16 - 21 January 2004
Mumbai, India http://www.jakartapeacecon.org/
Despite the opposition of the world?s majority, the United States and its allies went on to invade Iraq in an illegal war that has so far killed up to 10,000 civilians and soldiers. But while the weapons of mass destruction have not been found, the Iraqis? resources have been put on sale as part of a wholesale imposition of neo-liberal economic (…)

Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen
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George Bush’s America, the wealthiest nation in history, faces a growing poverty crisis. In the first of a three-part series Julian Borger takes the pulse of the US with elections just a year away
The free food is handed out at nine, but the queue starts forming hours earlier. By dawn, there is a line of cars stretching half a mile back. In Logan, it is what passes for rush hour - a traffic jam driven by poverty (…)

By Eduardo Galeano
The Progressive
December 2003 Issue
A gigantic gas explosion: This was the popular uprising that shook all of Bolivia and culminated in the resignation of President Sanchez de Lozada, who fled, leaving behind him a trail of corpses.
The gas was to have been shipped to California—for a minuscule price in exchange for a few miserable gifts— across Chilean land that used to be part of Bolivia. This last detail was just salt in the wound for a country that for more (…)

By MARC PERELMAN
FORWARD http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.31/news2.wurmser.html
Despite mounting criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be ratcheting up his commitment to the circle of neoconservative intellectuals who helped spearhead President Bush’s war policy, adding one of its most controversial proponents to his national security staff in a little-noticed move last month.
David Wurmser, a neoconservative scholar known for his (…)

War is the ultimate test of reality and illusion.
On the eve of World War I, the French General Staff was convinced victory would go to the attacker, that massed soldiers marching together into battle could overcome technology with courage and elan. German machine guns and artillery swiftly shattered that illusion, along with several hundred thousand young Frenchmen.
Today, the United States is engaged in a very similar application of theory and warfare, albeit the opposite of the one (…)

by Roshan Muhammed Salih
aljazeera November 3, 2003
Guantanamo has been called a concentration camp
An international filmmaker has exposed America’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a "human rights scandal".
Ashvin Raman has made a groundbreaking documentary for German television which will be screened on Germany’s ARD channel on 12 November.
His film includes exclusive footage of Guantanamo Bay, as well as interviews with released detainees and top American officials.
More than (…)

A High Price for a Hollow Victory
by US Senator Robert Byrd Senate Floor Remarks November 3, 2003
Published on Monday, November 3, 2003 by CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1103-14.htm
Senator Byrd delivered the following remarks as the Senate debated whether to grant final Congressional approval to the President’s $87 billion funding request for the military and Iraqi reconstruction.
The Iraq supplemental conference report before the Senate today has been widely (…)