Abu Ghraib and the American Devolution

When I was a kid, I liked the musical band Devo, whose name was derived from their concept that man was devolving. It was funny at the time, but 30 years later I feel compelled to write why torture is wrong, so maybe Devo was right. I wrote about apparent torture at the U.S. naval base in Cuba last December, long before the publication of torture photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. There had been dozens of press reports about officially sanctioned abuse of prisoners by U.S. troops, so it was bound to get worse until action was taken.

Much blame falls upon Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who dismissed questions about abuse as a joke, claiming those prisoners were horrible people. This caused severe damage with America's law abiding allies, and most of these horrible abused prisoners were released this year after the U.S. Army concluded they were innocent. Mankind has been fighting wars for thousands of years; this is not a new issue. The world thought the torture question had been resolved decades ago through the Geneva Conventions. The United States lost 400,000 dead during World War II, but never tortured prisoners to "save lives." Nevertheless, many devolved Americans have begun to question the ban on torture. Here are four reasons why torture is wrong:

1. Torture may save lives, but is likely to backfire and cause more American deaths in the long term.

There is a debate on whether torture is more effective than bribes, tricks, wiretaps, and informants. Let us assume it is effective and may prevent an attack. The problem is that reports of torture by Americans cause anger toward the U.S. and spawn more terror attacks. One of the reasons that most Iraqis now hate American occupiers is because of the widespread and officially sanctioned torture in Iraq. After the routine torture at Abu Ghraib prison was exposed, the U.S. Army dispatched investigators who determined that 80% of the arrested Iraqis had committed no crime. Whenever there was an explosion in Iraq, American forces arrived and rounded up suspects for interrogation, most were bystanders. These innocent Iraqis have thousands of friends and relatives who now hate American soldiers. This wasn't a "few bad apples" as some claim. Although the truly nasty photos have not been released, those published show a dozen or more soldiers openly abusing prisoners in the middle of a cell block for everyone to see.

Whenever former CIA Director William Webster was briefed on a proposed covert operation, he would always ask how it will look when it becomes public. Webster knew that most secret operations eventually became public, and the fallout from such disclosures was sometimes more damaging than whatever the operation might accomplish.

If senior leaders in the Pentagon had evaluated the damage to American credibility that would occur WHEN news of torture became public, they would have turned down the idea. In an era of e-mail and digital cameras, any wrongdoing can be exposed worldwide within hours. The senior military man in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, approved the torture and a U.S. Army captain has stated Sanchez was there during torture sessions. This is why Sanchez has been quietly retired, and why a major cover-up is underway. In the end, they'll lock up a few mid-level officers. See the great movie Breaker Morant for an example of how generals evade blame for war crimes.

2. If the USA ignores the Geneva Conventions, other nations and groups will ignore it.

U.S. troops taken prisoner now face the prospect of torture, not just for information, but as payback. Even the Nazis during World War II generally adhered to the Geneva Conventions. At that time, allied planes were bombing German cities to rubble killing thousands of civilians weekly. Perhaps torturing downed Allied pilots might have provided information to save German lives, but the German military treated allied POWs well. As the French fought to retain their colony in Vietnam during the 1950s, they routinely abused and tortured prisoners. So it was no surprise that the North Vietnamese abused American POWs two decades later in the same Hanoi prison used by the French.

There was outrage in the U.S. during the 1991 Gulf War and the recent invasion of Iraq about the treatment of American POWs. Some Americans were roughed up a bit, but nothing serious. Given the war conditions, the Iraqi medical treatment of Private Jessica Lynch was outstanding. In contrast, an Iraqi general died while being tortured by U.S. Army officers from the 3rd ACR, but the Army was reluctant to press charges. A year before that, two Afghanis died from beatings by American soldiers. An Army doctor listed the cause of death as homicide, yet no charges were ever filed.

Some argue that only POWs are protected by the Geneva Conventions, so anyone labeled as an "enemy combatant" or "terrorist" is not covered. That is false. POWs cannot be charged with crimes committed while fighting. However, all civilians must be treated humanely; no torture. They can be tried and convicted of crimes, and even executed, but not tortured.

3. There are never "ticking time bombs" where torture is justified.

The most common argument for torture is that if a terrorist (or a "commando," if he is on your side) is caught and brags that a big bomb will explode and kill hundreds of people, he should be tortured to save lives. In such cases, a high-level court or authority could issue a "torture warrant." This idea is advocated by Alan Dershowitz, who traveled the nation last year promoting it. Unfortunately, the values of most Americans have sunk so low that few were outraged, and Harvard didn't even fire this "Professor of Law." If Dershowitz had referred to terror suspects as "niggers," the nation would be aghast. Indignant idiots would exclaim: "I can't believe he used the 'N' word," but saying they should be tortured attracted little attention.

The problem with this idea is that no suspect will brag if it will result in torture, or alert his captors to look for and disarm his bomb. In rare cases in which something is about to happen, the information is needed within minutes, and arranging a court hearing or permission from a VIP during that time is near impossible. In addition, "ticking time bombs" are only in movies. A terrorist uses a fuse that explodes a few minutes after he is safely away, or he just blows himself up. Finally, while terror groups may cooperate, they are smart enough to limit the details of an attack to only those who will carry it out. If one member of the group is arrested or is missing, they will abort the attack anyway.

Another issue is that senior government leaders do not want to openly violate international law, lest they find themselves unwelcome at embassy dinner parties and have unkind things said about them in the media. So if they have authority to allow torture in rare and urgent cases, they will delegate that authority down the chain-of-command. However, mid-level officials know to evade blame, too, so the authority is pushed downward verbally until hillbillies from the West Virginia National Guard in Iraq hear vague orders from unknown officers and decide to rough up everyone. They are left unsupervised since officers don't want to be held accountable. After a few weeks, the situation devolves into anarchy as women and teenage boys are raped, prisoners die from beatings, while children of prisoners are abused to get their fathers to talk. Yes, all this happened in Iraq; read the news.

4. Civilized people don't torture people.

In the great movie The Bounty, Captain Bligh, played by Anthony Hopkins, and a dozen of his men are set adrift in the South Pacific on a small boat. They are soon starving, and one of the weaker seamen suggests to Bligh that once he dies, the others eat his corpse to survive. Captain Bligh rejects that idea by stating: "No, Sir! We were born as civilized men and we shall die as civilized men." That statement rings true in regards to torture. There is more to life than staying alive. A society must have standards and laws, and once those are dropped, man will devolve and the society collapse. So if a young soldier or high-level politician suggests they torture a prisoner in hope of getting information which may save lives, the man in charge must know to say: We are civilized and don't torture people. If we die, then we die as civilized people.

by Carlton Meyer

Sadr's Men Hold Iraq Shrine

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Fighters loyal to rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are firmly in control of Najaf's Imam Ali mosque, giving the lie to government claims that police had taken control of the shrine.

Militiamen brandished weapons defiantly and mocked Iraq's interim government around the mosque, at the centre of a confrontation with U.S. forces that has helped drive oil prices to record highs and presented the government with is biggest crisis yet.

Holding out hope for a peaceful resolution, one of Sadr's top aides said on Saturday the rebel leader wanted to hand over Iraq's holiest Shi'ite shrine to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shi'ite cleric, and that talks on the mosque's future were under way.

"We would like to hand over the shrine to the religious establishment which has the right to control it," Sheikh Ahmad al-Sheibani told reporters. "It is only natural that Ayatollah Sistani should accept it."

Sistani, who usually lives in Najaf, is now in Britain recovering from surgery.

But Sadr's aide later added that Sadr's militia would continue to guard the mosque after any handover, precisely the outcome that Iraq's interim government has vowed to prevent.

"The Mehdi Army will continue to defend the shrine and Najaf, all of Najaf because it is a holy city," Sheibani told reporters. "The Americans will not be allowed into Najaf."

Sheibani said no time had been set for a handover of the mosque and called on the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, which has threatened to storm the mosque, to pursue a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Hundreds of young men inside the shrine chanted slogans vilifying Allawi, who has called on them to lay down their weapons and leave the golden-domed shrine.

"We are winning, we will win over Iyad Allawi and the traitors collaborating with the Americans," they chanted.

Some held banners that said: "Where is the bullet that will grant me martyrdom?"

Sheibani said Sadr had agreed to hand over the keys to the shrine to Sistani's aides, but did not say when. Such a handover would be largely symbolic if Sadr's fighters remained in place in and around the mosque, where they have been fighting off efforts by U.S. and Iraqi government forces to dislodge them.

BLASTS

The sound of explosions echoed across the holy city early on Saturday, though their causes was not clear. The blasts followed a relatively quiet night, the calm broken only sporadically by U.S. aircraft flying overhead.

Confusion over who controlled the mosque swirled on Friday as Sadr's rebellion, in which hundreds have died, entered its third week.

The Interior Ministry said on Friday police had entered the shrine and arrested hundreds of fighters without firing a shot, a claim quickly denied by Sadr's aides.

A bloodless seizure of the mosque would have been a big political victory for Allawi. Since taking over from U.S. occupiers on June 28 he has struggled to end an insurgency and the Sadr-inspired Shi'ite revolt in eight cities.

Iraq's Health Ministry said on Saturday morning that at least 21 Iraqis had been killed and five wounded in fighting in Najaf over the past 24 hours.

The U.S. military said insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. military vehicle in southern Baghdad on Saturday, killing one soldier and wounding two others.

In a separate attack, two U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded on Friday by a roadside bomb near the city of Samarra, some 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

The attacks brought to 711 the number of U.S. troops killed in action in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion last year.

The uprising in Najaf fuelled fears of disruption to Iraqi oil production and helped push world crude prices to new highs. U.S. light crude hit a new record of $49.40 a barrel on Friday, before slipping back to close just below $48.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said on Friday Sadr might have escaped the mosque. He urged the cleric to surrender so he might be covered by an amnesty Allawi has offered.

By Michael Georgy

Sat 21 August, 2004 10:49

'I Know My Daughter Did Not Jump'

A dirty cop is a danger to us all. That's why the case of Joseph "J.J." Jennifer, the 13-year veteran of the D.C. police department who was found guilty last week of possessing the illegal and dangerous drug PCP, bears close watching.

It was Jennifer who, on the evening of July 6, 2002, drove Dawn Rothwell, her friend Teresa Cole and Jennifer's friend Sylvester "Ves" Webb to a drug-infested area in Southeast Washington, where Dawn purchased a dipper, or a cigarette laced with PCP. It was Jennifer who drove them back to Dawn's apartment, where he witnessed the drug being consumed by Cole, Webb and Dawn. And it was Jennifer who was one of the last people to see Dawn alive before her body went over the railing of her 12th-floor apartment at 800 Southern Ave. SE in the early morning hours of July 7, 2002.

In January 2003, then-D.C. chief medical examiner Jonathan Arden told me that he had ruled Dawn's death an accident based on the "absence of evidence of a struggle or foul play" and on the basis of police interviews with unnamed people who were in Dawn's apartment the evening before her death ["How Did Dawn Rothwell Die?" op-ed, Jan. 25, 2003]. Two of those unnamed people, we now know, were Joseph Jennifer and his friend Sylvester Webb.

Notwithstanding the medical examiner's ruling, I was told this week that Dawn's case has not been closed. In response to my written inquiries, Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia, wrote that Dawn Rothwell's death "is still under investigation by our Office. Now that the trial of Jennifer is over, we plan to meet with the family members in the very near future."

As well they should. There are plenty of loose ends to tie up. Let's start with Jennifer. Had he done what a good police officer would do on the evening of July 6, Dawn Rothwell would still be alive -- a point well made by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Kaufman during the drug trial. There's more to be learned about Jennifer's behavior that night. Consider the testimony of D.C. homicide Detective Anthony Paci, a government witness in Jennifer's non-jury trial.

Paci said he had worked with Jennifer for nearly 10 years in the police department's 4th District in Northwest Washington and considered him a friend. Paci testified that he had received a call about a woman being found "laying in the grass" behind a building at 800 Southern Ave. Paci said he went into her apartment and found Webb alone, sleeping on a cot, and woke him up. He said Webb told him he was unaware that someone had fallen to her death. Paci said: "We asked him who was in the apartment that night and he named a police officer who he called 'J.J.' " Paci said he knew a "J.J." when he was with the 4th District and gave his name as Joseph Jennifer. Webb confirmed that was the person. After he returned to the violent crimes branch, where he worked, Paci said, detectives discussed who would go pick up Jennifer, and Paci volunteered because he knew Jennifer.

Paci said he and homicide Detective Steve McDonald went to Jennifer's house. Jennifer greeted them with alcohol on his breath. Paci testified: "We stepped inside his house, you know, and I explained to him that I'm investigating a death and his name came up in it and I want to talk to him about that. And I asked him if he had met any females the night before, and he said yeah. . . . He said yes, and I said, 'Do you know their names?' He said, 'I just met them,' through a friend of his. And I said, 'Well, one of them is dead.' And he said, 'Wow, we smoked some dippers and fall of the building and jumped off the building.' " The transcript may not be entirely coherent, but it certainly is curious.

When asked by the prosecution whether he had mentioned anything about the dipper to Jennifer, Paci said, "No. So, you know, at the time, you know, when he made the comment, I was kind of shocked behind it, because I didn't mention anything about it. And so I said, 'Well, look, that's what we're here to talk about, so come to our office and speak with them.' "

Details of subsequent police interviews with Jennifer have not been publicly disclosed, but Phillips confirmed that Jennifer was interviewed at length by the police and that prosecutors are privy to the results. Phillips, in response to my inquiry, said that the U.S. attorney's office has not interviewed Jennifer "because he had a Fifth Amendment privilege arising out of the PCP charge."

And now that the trial has ended?

Let's turn to Webb, possessor of four convictions, who said he was asleep at the time Dawn Rothwell went over the balcony.

As the prosecution observed during Jennifer's drug trial, there were other moments during which Webb "conveniently" claimed that he had passed out as a result of a high level of intoxication. Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe made a similar observation in his summation: "[Webb's] recall seemed to be extraordinary for someone . . . as intoxicated as he described himself. And yet he did seem at various important parts to have been passed out and therefore avoiding examination on critical issues."

Reflect on the judge's and the prosecution's thoughts on Webb's credibility as you consider his claim to have been asleep as Dawn fell to her death. Reflect, too, on the behavior of Joseph Jennifer, who told Paci that he went to Dawn's apartment that evening to "get his freak on" or "have sex."

Dawn's mother, Barbara Rothwell, wrote in a Sept 10, 2002, letter to Police Chief Charles Ramsey (with copies to Mayor Anthony A. Williams and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton): "I know my daughter did not jump from her balcony. Chief Ramsey, please don't let this get swept under the rug because one of your officers was involved."

Chief Ramsey, are you listening?

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, August 21, 2004; Page A19

kingc@washpost.com

America's Disease is Greed

The most serious spiritual problem in the country today is reckless and untrammeled greed. Greed caused the disgraceful corporate scandals that fill our newspapers. Greed is responsible for crooked cops and crooked politicians. Greed causes the constant efforts to destroy unions that protect basic worker rights.

Greed has produced rash tax cuts that have given money to the rich and in effect taken it away from the poor. Greed has led to the immigration policy in which hundreds of poor men and women die every year as they struggle across the desert for the jobs that el norte promises them. Greed accounts for the efforts to take profitability out of the pensions and health insurance of working men and women. Greed is responsible for the fact that so many Americans have no health insurance and the fact that the recent reform of Medicare was a fraud. Greed causes newspapers to overestimate their circulation.

Greed is responsible for the obscene salaries of CEOs. In the '90s the ratio of CEO compensation to average workers' compensation was 250 to 1, meaning that the boss earned on his first day of work during a year as much as the worker did in a whole year. In European countries the ratio is closer to 100 to 1. Recent estimates put the current ratio at 500 to 1 -- the boss makes as much before lunch as the worker does all year. Greed is the cause of the high wages paid to the bosses even if the company is failing.

Greed is responsible for the endless stress and ruthless competition of the workplace and the strains and tensions of professional class marriages. Greed (in this instance another name for relentless ambition) explains much of the cheating on college campuses. Greed is responsible for outsourcing, which is incapable of comprehending that the employees who lose their jobs are also the consumers who sustain the economy. Greed generates the reckless ventures that in part caused the bubble of the late '90s. Greed causes expensive wars that shatter the budget. Greed is the reason that only the wealthy are benefitting so far from the economic upturn that is allegedly happening. Greed drives loan sharks. Greed is responsible for the success of big box stores that tax the poor with low wages to provide bargains for affluent suburban shoppers. Greed is the reason poor white Appalachians, poor African Americans and poor Native Americans must fight the wars that the wealthy start. Jessica Lynch joined the Army so she could go to college. Her Native American roommate, killed in action, joined so, single mother that she was, she could support her children. Greed is the reason why the country is being run by those whom the president has described, however inelegantly, as the ''haves and the have mores.''

No one said during the bizarre deification of President Reagan that he taught us that greed is good and that we should feel good about our greedy country. Greed is the reason that the country is being run by the insurance, pharmaceutical, weapons and petroleum industries. Greed causes worldwide sex slavery of women and children.

Greed drives the murders of the narcotics world. Greed is responsible for the exploitations of teen sports stars by colleges and for the mess in the pro sports world. It is also the cause of the use of performance drugs by young athletes. Greed is responsible for the bad advice lawyers gave the Church years ago to beat victims of sexual abuse into the ground. It is behind the scam artists who steal from the elderly.

Greed may have been a more serious problem for Americans, say, in the era of the robber barons. But the Garys and the Morgans and the Carnegies were a small bunch of men. Now their greed has seeped down to a much larger segment of the population.

The Catholic Church speaks of four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. Two are cheating workers out of wages and exploiting widows and children. Both happen every day in our greedy country.

Ambition is not evil within limits. The struggle for success is not bad within limits. Hard work and fair rewards are good within limits. It is not good to take from the poor and give to the rich, and that's exactly what this country is doing today.

Don't let anyone tell you that lust is the most deadly of the deadly sins.

by Andrew Greeley

Copyright 2004, Digital Chicago Inc.

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Pro-Abortion Madness

The abortion lobby has abandoned its rationales amid pro-life gains.


Activists on both sides of the gay marriage debate "have begun to speak of the issue as 'the new abortion'," The Washington Post reports. But what ever happened to the old abortion? As it turns out, the past few months have seen extraordinary progress for the unborn, with abortion supporters looking more desperate than ever.

The international front is full of good news. China is outlawing sex determination and sex-selective abortion, aiming to fix its gender imbalance by 2010. On the other side of the international political spectrum, the Netherlands has tethered its infamous abortion ship.

Meanwhile, Britain is engaged in a soul-searching moment. First came the release of images from the new 3D/4D ultrasound scans—one shows a 12-week-old child "walking" in its mother's womb. Then came the shocking news of the abortion rate (up 3.2 percent from 2002), "cosmetic" abortions (at least a dozen babies have been aborted for cleft lips and palates, in probable violation of British law), and medical advances. The author of Britain's 1967 Abortion Act, David Steel, said the law wrongly assumes fetuses can't survive outside the womb before 28 weeks. "Since then," he wrote in The Guardian newspaper, "medical science has continued to advance, recording survivals at 22 weeks of pregnancy." In 1990, British pro-life groups pushed to move the law back to 22 weeks, but got 24. Now Steel wants it halved, to 12.

Viability supposedly matters here as well. World magazine recently reported, "Forty states and the District of Columbia have post-viability abortion bans that are currently enforceable." Many of these state laws define viability too late: between 24 and 26 weeks. But in December, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman noted that the laws no longer reflect "extraordinary advances in medical science," he was condemned for eroding "choice."

Abortion advocates are increasingly abandoning science. "For a long time now, medicine has assumed too much importance in the abortion debate," Marina Benjamin wrote in The Scotsman. "If medical advances keep lowering the bar, we'll soon be faced with a situation where socially motivated abortions are legally discriminated against."

But people seem fine with that. A January poll showed that 43 percent of Democrats believe abortion "destroys a human life and is manslaughter." Those numbers will keep growing due to what The Wall Street Journal calls The Roe Effect: Pro-lifers can pass their values on to their children; those who abort their children can't. Another good sign: Anti-abortion demonstrations are getting younger.

Little wonder, then, that Sen. John Kerry touted that he too believes that life (though not necessarily personhood) begins at conception and that abortion is an "incredibly important moral issue."

For Kerry, the basis for keeping abortion legal isn't based in science but in the "separation of church and state." The change of rationale could be great news. It's no Herculean task to explain why banning abortion doesn't establish a government religion.

But abortion advocates aren't rallying to Kerry's view of conception, so they're not arguing church-state separation, either. In summary, they have lost ground on science, emotional appeals, constitutional law … What's left?

Insanity. Meet Amy Richards, whose "When One Is Enough" article in The New York Times Magazine told of how she unregretfully aborted two of her triplets because it would mean "shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise." Without the abortions, she exclaimed, "I'd have to give up my life!" That life is one where she's a Planned Parenthood leader, a consultant to Gloria Steinem, and founder of the Third Wave Foundation, which funds abortions. She's also one of the brains behind Planned Parenthood T-shirts that proudly proclaim, "I had an abortion."

Richards's article and those shirts have outraged even Planned Parenthood affiliates, but make no mistake: This is the direction that the movement is headed. Within days of the triplets article, the Times published another article on abortion. This time, Barbara Ehrenreich savaged women who regret their abortions or oppose those "socially motivated abortions" Benjamin was talking about. "Time to take your thumbs out of your mouths, ladies, and speak up for your rights," she said.

Not exactly the textbook method for winning hearts and minds. No wonder the tide is turning.

By Ted Olsen | posted 08/17/2004 9:30 a.m.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
September 2004, Vol. 48, No. 9, Page 82

Church in Bid to Halt Human Trafficking

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops with support from the Justice Department, is enlisting individuals to help in its effort to stop human trafficking, a problem so fierce it has been labeled a growth industry with thousands of immigrants forced or coerced into bondage as prostitutes or laborers.

It's "a modern-day slavery," said Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty, a coordinator for the conference's program. "It's a worldwide problem. But it happens right here, too."

Dougherty travels the country holding teaching seminars for law-enforcement officials, social workers, community and outreach groups and regular citizens--anyone who might come in contact with victims, she said.

It could be a police officer who shuts down a prostitution ring or a parishioner who notices someone in the congregation who sits apart, afraid to speak to others.

The seminars offer insight into who is forced into labor, how to identify victims and how to get them help.

"It's an eye-opener," said Joann Hillebrand, an Oak Brook resident and former international chairwoman of the National Council of Catholic Women, who traveled to Baltimore to attend Dougherty's course.

Hillebrand wanted to better understand the problem and to teach other Catholic women in the Chicago area what to look for in victims.

"I think most Catholic women don't understand what it's about. They might say it's not happening here. But it does," said Hillebrand, 62. "Girls come to this country thinking they are working as domestics in the suburbs or the city, and they get here and find their life is not what they thought it would be."

They are women likely to go to mass, Hillebrand said, adding that she hasn't noticed any victims who fit the profile but is confident she has the training to do so.

Because so many immigrants, even those in servitude, attend religious services, the church can play an important role in tackling the problem, Dougherty said.

"The church has always played a role in immigrant life," she said, and that role is now more important than ever."

Dougherty's sessions also are helpful for those who work with immigrants on a day-to-day basis, advocacy workers say.

"You realize the importance of asking pointed questions to determine whether you are talking to a victim of trafficking," said Esra Khalil, a legal advocate for Apna Ghar, an organization that helps southeast Asian domestic violence victims in Chicago.

Instead of just asking "Where are you from?" a social worker might ask, "What were you told before you were sent here?" or "Have you been able to contact your relatives at home," she said.

Dougherty said victims usually fit a pattern affected by poverty and patriarchal cultures.

"There is an inability to speak for themselves," she said. "When you ask a question, they don't want to talk about themselves. Or, they can't because they are accompanied by someone who clearly won't let them talk and won't leave you alone with them."

But it isn't just women and girls who are affected, Dougherty said. "Many victims are men who are forced into labor and boys forced into labor or sex exploitation."

Dougherty, 68, who works in Washington, spoke about her work during a recent visit to Chicago, where in the 1970s she helped teach inmates at Cook County Jail how to read.

Her work with the bishops conference has financial backing from the Bush administration. The Justice Department has awarded grants of $500,000 each to the Catholic Church and to World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian agency, to identify victims and return them to safety.

Human trafficking is defined as the transporting of people from one country to another through methods of force, coercion or fraud, Dougherty said. Such people are sold into bondage as prostitutes, domestic workers, child laborers and child soldiers worldwide.

Information on the extent of the problem is difficult to obtain because so many incidents presumably go unreported. But U.S. officials estimate that 700,000 people each year are trafficked within or across international boundaries.

In the U.S., some 17,000 human beings are forced or lured across its borders annually, according to the Justice Department, which calculated the numbers using information compiled from the news media, governments and non-government organizations.

The Chicago Police Department does not document the number of victims encountered in human-trafficking cases, because those cases often cross state or international boundaries and therefore are turned over to federal authorities, a spokesman said.

"It isn't as big a problem here as it is in places closer to the borders," said police Sgt. Robert Cargie. "But it's a problem we are aware of."

Two years ago, Chicago police recognized that three women arrested in Chinatown for prostitution-related offenses were Asian immigrants needing assistance. The women were turned over to immigration authorities to determine whether they were victims of human trafficking.

Heartland Alliance, an immigrant advocacy organization that sees human trafficking as a growing problem in Chicago, also has received $500,000 in federal funds to work with area victims.

Trafficking persists because victims are pushed to keep quiet, said Elissa Steglich, an immigration attorney at the Midwest Immigration and Human Rights Center, which works with Heartland Alliance. "They live in extreme isolation and fear," she said. "Our challenge is to break that silence."

By Shia Kapos
Special to the Tribune
Published August 20, 2004
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

First-Time Voters for Life

ACCORDING TO A RECENT POLL, new voters are trending pro-life on abortion. The nonpartisan Pace University/Rock the Vote survey, conducted by the Pace Poll in mid July, is the first in a three-part nationwide study of first-time voters, defined as "voters who registered after the 2000 presidential election." Most news coverage of the survey has focused on its implications for the general election. Namely, that in a head-to-head Bush-Kerry race, post-2000 registrants support Kerry over Bush by 50 percent to 40 percent; and in a three-way Bush-Kerry-Nader race, Bush garners 44 percent of the vote to Kerry's 42 percent and Nader's 6 percent. But the press has largely ignored first-time voters' opinions about abortion rights.

On abortion, Pace Poll researchers slice the new voter demographic into four groups. There are those who believe "abortions should be legal and generally available" (21 percent); those who feel "regulation of abortion is necessary, although it should remain legal in many circumstances" (23 percent); those who say "abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, such as to save the life of the mother, incest, or rape" (41 percent); and those who think "all abortions should be made illegal" (13 percent). The survey shows that, essentially, 44 percent of new voters are pro-choice while 54 percent are pro-life. Among first-time Latino voters, pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers 61 percent to 34 percent; among blacks, the pro-life/pro-choice breakdown is 59 percent/42 percent. Self-described "moderates" similarly tend to be more pro-life (52 percent) than pro-choice (45 percent).

Pro-life
views also have surprising traction among new voters who identify themselves as John Kerry supporters. A plurality (34 percent) of Kerry voters, not to mention pluralities of new independent voters (36 percent) and new undecided voters (35 percent), believe "abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, such as to save the life of the mother, incest, or rape." On the other hand, some 31 percent of Kerry voters say "abortions should be legal and generally available," the most extreme pro-choice position available. But still, first-time Kerry voters are more likely to be pro-life than they are to favor abortion on demand, according to the Pace Poll.

These findings come on the heels of an April 2004 Zogby poll, which showed that 56 percent of Americans either believe abortion should never be legal or would restrict it to cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is in danger. Zogby also revealed that more Americans consider themselves pro-life (49 percent) than pro-choice (45 percent). And according to a Gallup Youth Survey released last November, 72 percent of U.S. teenagers think abortion is morally wrong, 32 percent of teens would outlaw it entirely, and only 19 percent support abortion on demand.

To be sure, Americans' thoughts on the unborn are famously hard to unravel. Activists on both sides of the issue are thus wary of reading too much into individual polls. But, at the very least, the recent Pace Poll, Zogby, and Gallup results suggest pro-lifers should be guardedly optimistic about the future of abortion politics.

Duncan Currie is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.

'Death after death, blood after blood'

Killing goes on despite claims that siege is over


Inside the pockmarked entrance of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, there were no police to be seen yesterday afternoon.
Supporters of the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr loafed on carpets in the pigeon-infested courtyard. A few smoked; others dozed. A couple of young students stood next to a makeshift infirmary; parked nearby was an empty pallet covered in blood.

"We haven't given up. This is a lie by the government," said Amar Al-Khaji, a 29-year-old civil engineer from Baghdad. "As you can see, we are still here."

Only hours earlier a senior Iraqi government official had claimed that Iraqi police had secured the shrine, apparently bringing to an end the two-week standoff with Mr Sadr's militia. At least 400 Mahdi army members had been arrested, and the bloodshed had ended.

By dusk, it was apparent that this was not the case. Hundreds of unarmed supporters of the cleric were bedding down for another night in the mosque. In the rubbish-strewn alleyways around the shrine, fighters armed with Kalshnikovs sat on metal chairs.

The evidence of withering American bombardment was all around: tangled electricity wires, pulverised remains of earth barricades and the smell of decaying human flesh.

Far from being vanquished, the Mahdi army is still in Najaf, battling to win. "The fighting is still going on," Saeed Mustafa confirmed, as we crunched through Najaf's glass-strewn old city toward the shrine, arms raised and waving a white handkerchief.

All afternoon the dusty streets had echoed intermittently with the crump of mortars. Puffs of black smoke wafted over the Imam Ali shrine's golden dome.

The standoff in Najaf has plunged Iraq's beleaguered prime minister, Ayad Allawi, into his worst crisis so far. Mr Allawi issued a "last call" to the cleric on Thursday and the battle is clearly a defining moment for his interim government, which owes its existence to Washington.

Mr Sadr has rejected its authority and refused to compromise with foreign occupation.

What happens in Najaf next will determine Iraq's future, for better or worse. That may in part explain the confusion which surrounds events. The claims of victory, of a Sadr cave-in, appear to be wishful thinking, more than reality.

So, too, is the attempt to portray the battle for the Shias' holiest city as one in which the US military is merely assisting government forces.

At the moment, the Americans are doing all the fighting. The Iraqi police play merely a cameo role: a massive convoy rode towards the shrine yesterday, sirens blazing, celebrating a victory that never happened. Two minutes later it turned back.

On the streets there is exasperation. "Our situation is disastrous," said Abu Qatam, a 25-year-old taxi driver. "We don't have water or power. My neighbour came back yesterday to check on his house and he was killed. We don't know whether the Americans did it or the Mahdi army."

Where the Mahdi army has been newly turfed out, there is little sympathy for Mr Sadr, or for his militia, many of whose corpses lie unburied to the north of the shrine, in Najaf's vast cemetery.

"They are looters, murderers and Ba'athists," a shopkeeper, Abdul Amir, said. His troubles started six months ago, he said, when an American soldier bought one of his fridges.

"A month later the Mahdi army took me to the cemetery, accused me of being an American agent, and beat me up. After that I had to appear before Moqtada's Sharia court. Dozens of people have been tortured or disappeared. Moqtada has a secret underground jail. His followers have executed at least 300 people," he claimed.

It is not a claim that can be easily verified. But what is clear is that in the battle for Najaf, civilians are dying.

Forty six people were injured and 11 killed in the past two days of fighting, the director of Najaf's hospital, Falah Almahana, said yesterday.

A short stroll from his office was the evidence. The newly dead were stored in a makeshift truck, next to a German refrigerating unit that did not work. In it, the bodies were too numerous to count.

But it was clear the small girl with the gamine haircut and the other corpses had little to do with the battle that has been raging down the road. Three blanket-covered bodies lay nearby in the dust.

"They were walking down the street when a mortar landed on them," a morgue attendant, Abu Muhammad, explained.

Even if Iraqi troops eventually storm the shrine, or kill Mr Sadr, it seems optimistic to think his uprising will then disappear. In the town of Kufa, close to Najaf, dozens of Shia militiamen armed with rocket-propelled grenades were yesterday standing on the streets.

As night fell, the small girl's body lay unclaimed in Najaf's morgue. Next to her lay the corpse of a middle-aged woman who might have been her mother.

"I don't believe in violence. I've never fired a gun. The only way to solve this problem is through peaceful means," Dr Almahana said. "But this isn't happening in Najaf. Instead we have sadness after sadness, death after death, blood after blood."


Luke Harding inside the Imam Ali shrine, Najaf
Saturday August 21, 2004
The Guardian

37 Captured Iraqis Summarily Executed: Sources

TEHRAN (MNA) –- Thirty-seven civilians and militiamen loyal to rebel Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr were summarily executed last Monday in camps established by U.S. army intelligence units on the outskirts of Najaf, informed sources in Najaf have said.

Afterwards, the bodies of the victims were abandoned in the rubble of the battles in the city, added the sources, who requested anonymity.

The sources also reported that the U.S. occupation forces tortured the captives before summarily executing them.

In addition, some former Iraqi police officers who recently deserted their posts have said that U.S. troops have been killing people for entertainment.

The sources corroborated the report, saying a number of former Iraqi Baathist officers who are serving in the Iraqi National Guard receive money from U.S. forces for killing people in Najaf.

Some Iraqi officers have also revealed that mass graves containing the bodies of Iraqis killed by U.S. occupation forces will soon be unearthed in Iraq.

Some of the over 200 deserters from the Iraqi police have also said that U.S. forces have been looting houses in Najaf.


Tehran Times

US Forces Coming to Oil-rich Gulf of Guinea— USAF Commander

ABUJA — THE United States yesterday said it was deploying forces to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, off Nigeria’s coastline, because the region’s vast oil and gas resources were of strategic economic importance to America and the rest of the world. Besides, the Nigerian Air Force has started taking delivery of the US$3million worth of spare parts meant for repairs and maintenance of the nation’s Hercules C-130 combat aircraft earlier promised it by the United States Government.

Commander of the US Air Forces in Europe, General Robert Fogleson stated this during a visit to the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Jonah Wuyep at the Defence Headquarters. General Fogleson said with the increasing threats of global terrorism, the deployment of US forces in the Gulf of Guinea was necessary if only to help protect a region that is currently of great importance to America’s stability.

“We recognise there is going to be times around the world when the US military, in this case the US Navy, may have to respond to different conditions. Often, the US Air Force, the US Navy get involved in going to places where there have been some kind of humanitarian crises and so we will push forces out in the different regions and as you also know, there are times when we push our forces out in the world to care about potential terrorist activities they come across.

“But I can tell you this (Gulf of Guinea) was a broad-based exercise and that particular one was used as a sub-set of that broad range exercise,” he stated, adding “this region (Gulf of Guinea) is important to the stability of the United States and it’s important to the stability of the world in a sense because of the petroleum resource that you have in your country and so it’s no surprise to me that if the US Navy, the US Government wanted to exercise, that they will take the areas that are of great importance to them.”

Fogleson under whose command the Gulf of Guinea falls however assured the US Navy’s deployment in the region would not constitute any threat to the territorial integrity of Nigeria as the warships will exercise hundreds of miles off Nigeria’s coastline. He asked for cooperation and concerted efforts with Nigeria to deal with global terrorism, noting that no country on her own could successfully execute the task.

Speaking earlier, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Jonah Wuyep disclosed that the Nigerian Air Force has received from the US Government part of the US$3million worth of spares promised it to enable it repair the nation’s broken down Hercules C-130 aircraft.

“One had hoped that our return to democratic governance in 1999 would rekindle this co-operation. Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, things have not picked up as fast as we would have wanted. Notwithstanding, I must hasten to acknowledge the recent $3million aid package from the US Government to the NAF for the procurement of C-130 spares,” he said.

The Nigerian Air Force boss also called for an urgent co-operation with the US Air Force to enable the country combat any potential terrorist threat in the Gulf of Guinea which he said should be of concern to both countries given the region’s rich oil and gas resources.

Wuyep therefore solicited further assistance of the US Air Force to enable the Nigerian Air Force complement the efforts of the Nigerian Navy in providing adequate security in the Gulf of Guinea.

Habib Yacoob
Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Hague Ruling on Fence Could Lead to Sanctions on Israel

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz yesterday warned that the decision on the separation fence by the International Court of Justice in The Hague could lead to anti-Israel actions in international forums that could include sanctions.




The warning accompanied a report delivered yesterday by Mazuz to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who requested a month ago that the attorney general set up a committee to look into the ICJ's decision.

In an advisory opinion to the UN General Assembly last month, the ICJ said that Israel's fence is illegal and must be torn down.

"It is difficult to overestimate the negative ramifications that the ICJ's decision will have on the State of Israel in various spheres, even on issues beyond the separation fence," Mazuz wrote in an accompanying note to Sharon. "The decision could gradually have an effect on rulings by Israeli courts about the administration of military authority in the territories and about the building of the fence."

Mazuz added: "The decision creates a political reality for Israel on the international level, that may be used to expedite actions against Israel in international forums, to the point where they may result in sanctions."

Mazuz recommends that, at the earliest possible opportunity, Sharon adjust the decisions about the separation fence's route and arrangements in the seam-line areas, so that they meet the principles fixed by the Israeli High Court of Justice in its June decision about the fence in the Beit Suriq area (where 30 kilometers of the current route were disqualified). This, Mazuz says, could lessen tensions in the international legal arena.

Mazuz also recommends that the corrected route of the fence be anchored in a new cabinet decision that would send a message to the world that Israel is upholding international law according to the decisions of its own courts.

The attorney general also recommends setting up an interministerial team to study international developments that will affect Israel, and a legal team that will follow legal processes abroad and make recommendations. He proposes that Israeli spokespeople stress that Israel upholds international law and accepts the ICJ's opinion, even though it was based on partial, and partly obsolete, data.

The panel that drew up the 84-page report consisted of legal experts from the Justice Ministry, the defense establishment, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry.

Meanwhile, the High Court of Justice yesterday gave the state 30 days to explain the implications of the decision by the ICJ, concerning the separation fence, on Israel's policy with regard to the fence. The prosecution will also have to report to the high court whether it will refrain from putting up the separation fence beyond the Green Line.

Yesterday's decision was handed down by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, and Justices Eliahu Mazza and Mishael Cheshin during the discussion of seven petitions concerning the building of the fence in the vicinity of Palestinian villages in the territories and certain parts of East Jerusalem, including Budrus, Beit Jala and A-Ram.

During the debate on the fence planned to be built on lands belonging to the village of Shukba, near Ben-Gurion Airport, Barak remarked: "At some stage, we will have to deal with the ruling of the ICJ at The Hague. Perhaps not in this case, although it appears this is an appropriate one." Barak said that his opinion was that it was necessary to deal with only those parts of the ruling that are relevant in Israel's eyes.

"The ICJ regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory," Barak said, "while we do not. The relevant approach should be toward the villages and not Jerusalem. But we will have to say something on the subject ... and to announce whether or not we accept the opinion of the ICJ."

Yuval Roitman of the prosecution then pointed out that the ICJ had handed down an "advisory opinion" and not a "ruling," as Barak had called it.

The justices decided to issue an order nisi concerning all the petitions except the one about setting up the fence in the A-Ram area, which lies inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, and gave the state a month to respond.

Since the hearings are expected to take several months, the court gave the state permission to continue building the fence on condition that, if the ruling is against the present route, the state will remove the fence and compensate the Palestinian residents.




By Yuval Yoaz



Attorney General Menachem Mazuz yesterday warned that the decision on the separation fence by the International Court of Justice in The Hague could lead to anti-Israel actions in international forums that could include sanctions.

The warning accompanied a report delivered yesterday by Mazuz to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who requested a month ago that the attorney general set up a committee to look into the ICJ's decision.

In an advisory opinion to the UN General Assembly last month, the ICJ said that Israel's fence is illegal and must be torn down.

"It is difficult to overestimate the negative ramifications that the ICJ's decision will have on the State of Israel in various spheres, even on issues beyond the separation fence," Mazuz wrote in an accompanying note to Sharon. "The decision could gradually have an effect on rulings by Israeli courts about the administration of military authority in the territories and about the building of the fence."

Mazuz added: "The decision creates a political reality for Israel on the international level, that may be used to expedite actions against Israel in international forums, to the point where they may result in sanctions."

Mazuz recommends that, at the earliest possible opportunity, Sharon adjust the decisions about the separation fence's route and arrangements in the seam-line areas, so that they meet the principles fixed by the Israeli High Court of Justice in its June decision about the fence in the Beit Suriq area (where 30 kilometers of the current route were disqualified). This, Mazuz says, could lessen tensions in the international legal arena.

Mazuz also recommends that the corrected route of the fence be anchored in a new cabinet decision that would send a message to the world that Israel is upholding international law according to the decisions of its own courts.

The attorney general also recommends setting up an interministerial team to study international developments that will affect Israel, and a legal team that will follow legal processes abroad and make recommendations. He proposes that Israeli spokespeople stress that Israel upholds international law and accepts the ICJ's opinion, even though it was based on partial, and partly obsolete, data.

The panel that drew up the 84-page report consisted of legal experts from the Justice Ministry, the defense establishment, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry.

Meanwhile, the High Court of Justice yesterday gave the state 30 days to explain the implications of the decision by the ICJ, concerning the separation fence, on Israel's policy with regard to the fence. The prosecution will also have to report to the high court whether it will refrain from putting up the separation fence beyond the Green Line.

Yesterday's decision was handed down by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, and Justices Eliahu Mazza and Mishael Cheshin during the discussion of seven petitions concerning the building of the fence in the vicinity of Palestinian villages in the territories and certain parts of East Jerusalem, including Budrus, Beit Jala and A-Ram.

During the debate on the fence planned to be built on lands belonging to the village of Shukba, near Ben-Gurion Airport, Barak remarked: "At some stage, we will have to deal with the ruling of the ICJ at The Hague. Perhaps not in this case, although it appears this is an appropriate one." Barak said that his opinion was that it was necessary to deal with only those parts of the ruling that are relevant in Israel's eyes.

"The ICJ regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory," Barak said, "while we do not. The relevant approach should be toward the villages and not Jerusalem. But we will have to say something on the subject ... and to announce whether or not we accept the opinion of the ICJ."

Yuval Roitman of the prosecution then pointed out that the ICJ had handed down an "advisory opinion" and not a "ruling," as Barak had called it.

The justices decided to issue an order nisi concerning all the petitions except the one about setting up the fence in the A-Ram area, which lies inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, and gave the state a month to respond.

Since the hearings are expected to take several months, the court gave the state permission to continue building the fence on condition that, if the ruling is against the present route, the state will remove the fence and compensate the Palestinian residents.

Yuval Yoaz

Fraud Ruled Out in Chavez's Referendum Victory

The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on Friday ruled out any possibility of a fraud, as claimed by the opposition, in the victory of President Hugo Chavez in the recall referendum held last Sunday.

A senior official of the CNE, Tibisay Lucena, said no irregularity has been spotted in the auditing of 150 electoral centers, as confirmed by the international observers.

In 15 percent of the audited centers, "we have not drawn a single ballot showing any irregularity," she added.

Representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the US-based Carter Center, which jointly carried out the audit Thursday with the CNE at the request of the opposition, saidthat until Thursday, 35 percent of the random sampling of 150 voting centers, out of a total of 12,358, had been checked.

The audit, made on a random sampling of 400 voting machines, aimed to dispel fraud charges from the opposition in the referendum, which accused the government of tampering with electronic voting machines to give Chavez 59 percent of the vote, compared with 41 percent backing its recall.

However, opposition leaders boycotted the audit, saying it was not stringent enough, and demanded a far wider audit to include the touch-screen machines used in the referendum.

Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and reelected to a six-year term in 2000, rejected his opponents' accusation and said they aretrying to stir up anti-government unrest in Venezuela.

On Friday, CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez also said the auditing of the votes of the recall referendum has "very overwhelming" results of the legitimacy of the process.

The auditing was carried out although there was no formal charges of fraud as claimed by the opponents of President Chavez, he noted.

Rodriguez insisted that until now, the CNE has not received a single charge of fraud. "Everything will be sufficiently cleared up by the time we present the auditing results which, from my perspective are overwhelming," he said.

"This is the last auditing by the CNE in order to bring calm topeople who have been bombarded by a series of denunciations that are, from our perspective, unfounded," said Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, both the Carter Center and the OAS have expressed their attitude toward the fairness of the referendum.

"Based on our prior examination of the voting machines, we expect the audit will confirm the results," said Jennifer McCoy, leader of the Carter Center observer mission.

"If there is a significant pattern, ... this audit will demonstrate it," she added.

On Thursday, the OAS said the fact that the same results of therecall referendum were registered in different voting machines "isnot suspicious."

At a press conference, mission representative Edgar Castro saidthe results were similar in 47 voting machines.

According to a communique issued by the OAS, its international electoral observation mission validated the victory of Chavez, saying the results were "compatible with the internal controls effected by the mission."

"The electronic-voting system and the broadcasting of the results of the electoral journey were adequately audited, with alldue conditions to ensure the secrecy and fidelity of the vote," itadded.

Beside the international observers, many foreign countries haverecognized Chavez's win. The United States, the biggest buyer of Venezuela's oil, has said that "the process was credible and met international standards."

About 10 million Venezuelans cast their votes in Sunday's referendum to decide whether President Chavez should finish the remaining two years of his six-year term or step down.

A massive turnout forced the authorities to twice extend the closing time of the referendum and keep polling stations open wellafter midnight. Enditem

www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-21 11:05:35
CARACAS, Aug. 20 (Xinhuanet)

Najaf Standoff Continues; 90 Killed, 70 Hurt In Iraq Battles

The standoff in the key city of Najaf continued on Saturday with Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr gunmen still controlling streets around the great shrine after 16 days of fighting with US-led forces.

In the continuing violence, two US soldiers among 90 killed and 70 other injured in the past 24 hours in Najaf, where US forces pounded Shia militia bastions overnight, the health ministry said.

Fighters loyal to Sadr were patrolling the narrow alleys leading to the mosque a day after police claimed to have taken control, reports said, adding that Sadr has offered to hand over the shrine - sacred to Muslims worldwide - only to more senior Shia clergy.

A US defence official on Friday denied Iraqi government claims that Iraqi police had entered the revered Shia shrine in Najaf and evicted armed followers of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. "Not a lick of truth to it," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are still outside of the shrine, and so are the Iraqi police," he added.

Friday night passed quietly, the calm broken only by the roar of US jets.

Sadr's Mehdi Army (MA) militia had appeared poised to hand over control of the Imam Ali shrine on Friday.

Earlier some reports had indicated that Shia militiamen holed up in the holy city of Najaf handed over the keys of their stronghold to aides of top moderate cleric on Friday but denied they had capitulated in their 16-day standoff with US-backed security forces.

"The keys were handed to the office (in Najaf)," Sistani spokesman Sayed Murtadha al-Kashmiri told AFP news agency in London where the top cleric has been receiving medical treatment.

Earlier on Friday, a spokesman for Sadr said Sistani had agreed to take the keys to pave the way for a peaceful resolution to the bloody standoff around one of holiest shrines.

"We went to Sistani’s office this morning to agree on giving up the keys to the mausoleum. His office called Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in London, who agreed to take the keys," Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani told AFP in Baghdad.

Al-Shaibani said Moqtada Sadr was still in Najaf and would not leave it alive. "Moqtada Sadr is a son of Najaf and leader of the Mehdi Army (militia) in Najaf. He will not leave Najaf except (through) martyrdom," he told Al-Jazeera television.

The symbolic handover came after a day of confusion in which Iraqi government officials had insisted against all evidence on the ground that the police had entered the mosque compound and detained several hundred militiamen.

In a sermon read on his behalf in the nearby Kufa Mosque, al-Sadr said he wanted the religious authorities to take control of the Old City from his Mehdi Army, though he also called on all Muslims to rise up if the shrine is attacked.

"I call on the Arab and Islamic people: If you see the dome of Hazrat Ali Shrine shelled, don’t be lax in resisting the occupier in your countries," he said. Militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday removed their weapons from the revered Hazrat Ali Shrine.

By Friday evening, militants had withdrawn all their weapons from the shrine compound, where civilians and unarmed militia members mingled in peace, though some sporadic gunfire could be heard in the streets.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said the police entered the shrine and arrested 400 armed militants without incident. However, reporters who were inside the shrine throughout the afternoon said that not a single policeman entered the compound and no arrests had been made.

Meanwhile, some other reports surfaced that Iraqi police had managed to enter the site unopposed but Iraq's National Security Adviser, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, confirmed for the BBC that the shrine was still out government control.

Al-Shaibani said MA fighters would "resist any attempt by the Iraqi police to control the shrine". Peace talks have been under way with representatives of the most influential Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is recovering from heart surgery in Britain.

Meanwhile, fresh fighting had broken out between US troops and Shia militia in the southern part of Najaf, casting doubt on official claims police are in control of the shrine. US Marines in Najaf cannot verify that Iraqi police are in control of a holy shrine, a CNN correspondent with the marines said on Friday.

Some 90 people were killed and another 70 wounded in the past 24 hours in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, where US forces pounded Shia militia bastions overnight, the health ministry said. But by Friday morning, the city was quiet, and Allawi stepped back from his government’s threats to raid the mosque.

"We are not going to attack the mosque, we are not going to attack Moqtada al-Sadr and the mosque, evidently we are not going to do this," Allawi told BBC radio. By Friday morning, the shrine compound, which had been filled with hundreds of chanting and bellicose gunmen in recent days, appeared far calmer. Far fewer people were inside and no armed men could be seen.

US forces said they were still geared up for a fight. "We are continuing to do planning and preparations for continuous offensive operations to get Mehdi militia destroyed, to capture Moqtada al-Sadr and to turn the holy shrine back to the Iraqi people," Lt-Col Myles Miyamasu, of the 1st Cavalry Division, told CNN.

US Marine Capt Carrie Batson said the US warplanes had been "clearing Moqtada militia positions" east of the revered Hazrat Ali Shrine on Thursday night, when at least 30 explosions shook the Old City. Before dawn Friday, US forces also fired precision-guided bombs at militiamen who were firing mortars at the US troops in the neighbouring cemetery and Old City, Batson said.

North of Baghdad, in the Sunni insurgent bastion of Samarra, two US soldiers were killed when a makeshift bomb hit their patrol on Friday evening.

Meanwhile, two US Marines were killed in action in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province, the US military said on Friday. One Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died of wounds received in action Wednesday and a second was killed in action Thursday while conducting "security and stability operations,’’ the statement said.

In Fallujah, US warplanes launched two air strikes on Friday. Two people were killed and six injured in the first attack just after midnight, said Dia’a al-Jumeili, a doctor at Fallujah’s main hospital. A second warplane fired at least one missile into an industrial area of the city later on Friday morning. It exploded in an open field, leaving a crater and spraying shrapnel across the doors of nearby automobile shops, but causing no serious damage. Two Iraqis were killed in the southern Iraqi town of Samawah early on Friday after a shoot-out with Dutch troops stationed in the area, an army spokesman here said.
Baghdad, August 21 (NNN):

Confusion Reigning in Najaf

ONE report said that the siege at Najaf’s Imam Ali mosque was over, and that police had arrested 400 rebel fighters.

Another said that nothing had happened, and that the supporters of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remained in control of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines.

As with most stories involving Sadr, it was difficult to know yesterday what was true and what was not.

After two days of ultimatums and broken agreements to vacate the mosque, Iraqi police were adamant that they had finally ended the siege, entered the holy shrine and arrested 400 fighters.

Sadr’s office, anxious for no loss of face on the part of the young firebrand, insisted negotiations were continuing to hand over the mosque to the senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Journalists who entered the mosque yesterday afternoon appeared to back the latter version; sporadic fighting was continuing, they said, and no sign of a police presence was visible in the shrine.

The US military, which had surrounded the mosque after a night of fierce fighting, was unable to shed any light on the situation.

Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic said he could not confirm the country’s police had taken control of the mosque, and he did not know Sadr’s whereabouts.

"Right now, we cannot confirm that," he said when asked about Iraqi government statements that police had seized the Imam Ali mosque and arrested hundreds of Sadr’s Shiite fighters.

He said the US military had heard rumours Sadr had fled, but had no intelligence on where he was.

Sadr has been playing a game of brinkmanship with Iraq’s interim government and the US military for days. Holed up in the mosque in Najaf, he has fought a fierce military campaign that has provided a focus for a more widespread uprising across southern Iraq.

Facing an ultimatum from the Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, to vacate the mosque and lay down his arms, Sadr appeared to have caved in. But just as he had done previously, he then went back on his word.

Yesterday afternoon, one of his top aides said reports the Iraqi police had taken control of the Imam Ali mosque were false.

"The shrine is in the control of the Mahdi army. The Mahdi army will resist any attempt by the Iraqi police to control the shrine," said Sheikh Ahmad al-Shaybani. But he added: "Procedures are under way to hand over control of the shrine to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani."

He said a delegation was meeting aides of the senior cleric to hand over the keys to the mosque.

"Handing over the keys means handing over the administration of this international landmark to the religious authority. We will be ordinary people visiting it," he said. "Any militiamen who wants to enter it will have to leave his weapon outside."

But he said Sadr was still refusing to disarm his militia, the al-Mahdi army, as demanded by the government to avert an all-out US-led offensive to crush the rebels who have risen up in Najaf and at least seven other cities.

Iraqi officials, however, insisted the siege was over. An interior ministry spokesman said police who entered the mosque had found 500 lightly armed men prepared to surrender. Sadr was not among them, he said.

"There are 500. They were escorted from the shrine, then the police will help them as much as they can. They may well be covered by the amnesty," said Sabah Kadhim.

He said Sadr, who had defiantly vowed to seek "martyrdom or victory", might have escaped.

"It is possible he might have escaped overnight," he said, then urged the cleric to turn himself in. "We urge him to come and turn himself in and he might be covered by the amnesty."

Asked whether all the fighters who had surrendered in the mosque would be eligible for an amnesty, Mr Kadhim said: "We will try to deal with any misled young men."

However, journalists suggested that the situation remained fraught. A Reuters cameraman said fighting was raging even after the government announced Iraqi police had entered the site peacefully.

"Fighting is continuing near the Imam Ali mosque. We can’t approach the shrine because of the clashes," said Haidar Salahuddine. Other witnesses said US forces in the city were exchanging machine-gun fire with Sadr’s militia.

Iraq’s health ministry said at least 77 Iraqis had been killed and 70 wounded in fighting in Najaf in the preceding 24 hours.

It said 13 Iraqis had been killed and 107 others wounded in Baghdad, and one killed and another wounded in Basra over the same period.

Witnesses reported that US AC-130 gunships launched a series of attacks in Najaf during the night.

"There was no way to sleep. Bang, bang all night," said Aziz Hassan, 40. "Many stores are closed. I am living on bread."

Some residents now refuse to believe anything they hear. Mohammed Jassim, a father of eight, shook his head as he stood on a street corner while gunfire crackled overhead and tank shells exploded nearby.

"I really don’t believe any news anymore. We have heard it all before from both sides. We are not living like humans."

Nasser Zichawi, holding on to his daughter, aged three, said: "My daughters cried all night. I told them it was nothing but they just kept crying."

The Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, was unable to clear up the confusion, blaming problems in communications between Najaf and Baghdad.

"The situation is not terribly clear now," he said. "The telephone line is not clear, we couldn’t establish communication with the governor of Najaf, neither with the chief of police in Najaf."

But he stressed that the interim government had wanted its security forces, accompanied by religious authorities, to enter the shrine peacefully to defuse the crisis.

Mr Allawi had pledged his forces would not storm the site. In an interview yesterday, he claimed that Sadr’s men had wired the mosque with explosives.

The al-Mahdi army had been entrenched inside the shrine and the alleyways leading to it, along with an adjoining ancient cemetery. Witnesses had said several hundred fighters were inside the sprawling complex.

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U.S. Rep. Jim Leach says U.S. Needs To Leave Iraq As Soon As Possible

Instead of focusing on his campaign like other stump speakers at the Iowa State Fair this week, U.S. Rep. Jim Leach emphasized the need for the United States to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

Leach, who voted in 2002 against the resolution that gave President Bush the authorization to use force in Iraq, said, “Sometimes force is used to establish order, but sometimes force becomes a magnet for instability, and I’m afraid, with each passing week, the magnet aspect of the use of force in Iraq may be increasing.”
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He called the case for finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq frail and pointed to a worldwide consensus that the American-led hunt was unsuccessful.
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Leach, a Davenport native who has represented parts of eastern Iowa in Congress for 28 years, believes the next step in Iraq should be a push for democratic elections in hopes of pulling out American troops by the end of the year.
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“My sense is that the basis for disengagement should be advancing democracy,” he said. “The longer we stay in Iraq, the more troublesome the circumstances will be in that country. … in the United States and in other parts of the world.”
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While Leach supports the call for a strong military in America, he believes that muscle should be balanced with caution and restraint rather than a tendency toward intervention.
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Leach’s opponent in this year’s 2nd Congressional District election, Democrat Dave Franker, said in his speech at the fair that the heart of the race is not focused on international politics, but rather on domestic issues directly affecting southeastern Iowans.
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Franker challenged many of Leach’s recent political decisions, insisting he would have voted differently.
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Franker called the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, which Leach supported, confusing and comparable to crumbs for Iowa seniors. Leach agreed that the voluntary program is confusing and imperfect, but not trivial.
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“The choice between food and medicine for poor Americans will disappear,” Leach said. “This is the first and only time that something significant has happened after almost two decades of debate on the subject. From a progressive perspective, it is not trivial.”
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In 2006, when the bill is fully implemented, low-income citizens will be able to obtain prescription drugs for a $1 co-payment, a benefit Leach considers “absolutely extraordinary, if not revolutionary.”
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The program, which Leach said is structured to be most beneficial to members of the lowest income bracket, is expected to assist almost half of the underprivileged elderly residents of rural Iowa.
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Franker also disagreed with the incumbent’s vote for the No Child Left Behind Act, which Leach said he supported because it included a 20 percent increase in funding for education.
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“Any opponent of mine can point out any area of federal spending and say that they would have supported more,” Leach said. “One of the dilemmas is, when you go to war, all the increases in spending are related to national security, externally and internally, which puts a great constraint on the capacity to do other things.”

By Kristin Hoelscher

Contact the city desk at (563) 383-2245 or newsroom@qctimes.com.

Justice Scorned in Haiti

When the Bush administration pushed for the ouster of Haiti's democratically elected president earlier this year, one of its main complaints was his reliance on armed political gangs to sustain his rule. Now the new government that Washington helped install in Jean-Bertrand Aristide's place has permitted a scandalous judicial exoneration of one of Haiti's most notorious political gangsters, Louis-Jodel Chamblain. Mr. Chamblain just happens to have been a leading force in the February rebellion that helped force Mr. Aristide from office.

Mr. Chamblain's violent history goes back more than a decade. Under the military government of the early 1990's, he was one of the leaders of a death squad that is alleged to have murdered thousands of people.

After American troops restored democracy to Haiti in 1994, Mr. Chamblain fled to the Dominican Republic. Haitian courts twice convicted him in absentia for politically motivated killings - once for organizing the 1993 assassination of Antoine Izméry, a pro-Aristide business leader who was dragged from a church service and shot, and another time for complicity in the death squad massacre of residents of Raboteau, a slum on the outskirts of Gonaïves.

Under Haitian law, Mr. Chamblain was entitled to new trials after his return from exile. The first, in the Izméry case, was held this week. In a quickly convened overnight proceeding, the prosecution produced just one witness - who claimed to know nothing about the case - and Mr. Chamblain was promptly acquitted.

Washington rightly deplored the haste and "procedural deficiencies" of the Chamblain retrial. But it should not have been particularly surprised.

Haiti's justice minister, Bernard Gousse, earlier suggested that Mr. Chamblain might be pardoned "for his great services to the nation" as a leader of the anti-Aristide rebellion in February. Before that, Prime Minister Gérard Latortue had publicly hailed another rebel leader, who had also been convicted in the Raboteau massacre, as a "freedom fighter."

Mr. Chamblain's earlier trials in absentia may have been flawed as well, although they were less hastily prepared and conducted. A poorly staffed, unprofessional and highly politicized judicial system has been a serious problem in Haiti for decades. But the current Haitian government - sponsored by Washington, led by internationally known technocrats like Mr. Latortue and protected by a U.N. peacekeeping force - is supposed to be setting a better example. Instead, it has given another ugly example of a Haitian government that shields its political gangster allies from justice.

New York Times Editorial

Friday 20 August 2004

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McGREEVEY'S TREASON

HOMELAND INSECURITY

The Brits have such bizarre sex/spy scandals that the casts sometimes
seem like a combination of a James Bond flick and "Keeping Up
Appearances". Could anyone bear watching "Hyacinth Meets Goldfinger"? Now New
Jersey presents same show and we are expected to be amused while common
sense tells us that sybarites are security risks.

As part of that suave and charming clot of English traitors, the Ring
of Five, Philby trained the CIA¡¦s Angleton. When Philby defected and
the truth came out, Washington was rocked, of course, but once some token
housecleaning was done and a couple of tactical heads rolled, the spy
business settled back to its usual smoke-and-mirrors games. Everyone
pretended that it didn¡¦t really happen and that it certainly could never
happen again. Never mind we had the Rosenburgs taking the wrap for the
whole lot of Manhattan Project ideologues and the friends of FDR who
just happened to be Communists/globalists. Never mind that Victor
Rothschild had influence on the transition of the OSS to the CIA and seems to
have made sure it was compromised from day one. He only reported to the
Moscow Center and was a member of Mossad. Not to worry, he was rich you
know.

And now we have the Gay Guv, claiming to have had an affair with
someone who says he is not gay while both head for the exits. The alleged boy
toy made a clean escape back to his kibbutz and the guv is twisting in
the wind while the political mavens try to manipulate a coup. The media
is having a field day sending the dogs off on false scents to distract
from the real problem.

These conspiracies are not theories. They are real conspiracies. This
is a crystal-clear example of one and it is worse that the Jonathan
Pollard case because the federal government let the Mossad operative
escape. The Feds seem to do that for all Mossad operatives. Does anyone think
for a minute there will be a formal diplomatic complaint lodged by our
government against the government of Israel for espionage? Will any
Israelis be expelled as would other countries¡¦ diplomats under the same
circumstances?

Will McGreevey be tried for treason? We are in a war, aren¡¦t we? He
did compromise national security, didn¡¦t he?

Even before I read Andy Martin, Justin Raimondo and Wayne Madsen, it
was apparent that we had an American variation on the Victor Rothschild
cover. During World War II, Victor Rothschild held a security post that
enabled him to visit every top-secret facility in England and many in
the U.S. He thoughtfully pointed out weaknesses and offered suggestions
for improvements, while passing information on to those whose best
interests were not shared by England or the United States. An ironic point
is that the handler for Rothschild and the Ring of Five, Yuri Modin,
was described as a "poet", just as Cipel is.

What should make every red-blooded American boiling mad is that these
"incidents" with Israeli operatives keep happening and there are no
consequences. When anyone takes notice, good ole Abe Foxman is right there
shrieking "anti-Semitism" to still any criticism with threats of jail,
lawsuits and hate crimes. This aggressive behavior stifles objectivity.
Why? What¡¦s his real schtick?

There is something very, very wrong with this picture. How can we
protect ourselves if our critical faculties are banned from functioning? If
we smell smoke and see flames, must we wait for the government to tell
us there is a fire? Are we expected to be so corrupted by sex, drugs
and rock & roll not to notice? Or do they just write us off as stupid
because we aren¡¦t rich?

Those who take our money, use our intelligence services and our
military, never reciprocate. We are hated by the world because we are patsies
for these parasites. Why are there ANY non-citizens working for our
politicians and our government? Any politician who has any staffer, paid
or unpaid, who is not a bona fide tax-paying, voting American citizen
should be run out of office immediately. This is tantamount to treason,
in my humble opinion. No good can come of this duplicity. What
allegiance is there? Certainly not to the United States of America. This applies
to all levels of government and to all bureaucracies. We are riddled
with moles. No wonder the nation is in such a mess!

Not only is Israel a false friend, but so is Mexico. Mexico ought to be
named a terrorist nation because of the hordes of our enemies it helps
into this country and its attacks on our Border Patrol.

Did our government lodge a complaint against the government of Mexico
when one of their helicopters crossed our borders and fired 70 rounds at
our customs agents on February 10 in Columbus, NM? A reasonable nation
would call that an act of war. Our politicians ignored it, proving that
not all whores wear skirts.

When people ask me for whom I am going to vote, I tell them that I will
vote for anyone who will prosecute and execute the politicians,
lawyers, judges and bureaucrats who allow our economy, sovereignty and
security to be compromised. I will vote for anyone who will get us out of the
UN, put a freeze on immigration for 10 years (until we get all the
current illegals deported), bring back our manufacturing base, return
control of our private property to us and only have genuine citizens on its
staff.

Until McGreevey is tried for treason, a complaint filed with the
Israeli government and our borders sealed, there is no reason to trust those
who call themselves our leaders. It would enhance my sense of security
to know that our government considers us a sovereign nation and acted
like it.

Paula Devlin

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with
this notice and hyperlink intact."
http://etherzone.com/2004/devl082004.shtml

No to The Global Police State and Homeland InSecurity!

The mandate of the Official 9-11 Inquiry and 9-11 Commission has been to justify the construction of Homeland Security, A Police State Apparatus, designed to crush dissent rather than catch terrorists.

Most terrorism is funded, assisted, and implemented via the alphabet soup of Intelligence Agencies that already exist, with the assistance of the U.S. military, and its allies, who serve transnational corporate interests, and rely upon a war economy.

Al Qaeda is a joint creation of the CIA and Saudi Arabia through Pakistan's ISI; on the surface Al Qaeda is "the outside enemy" to justify military actions, but beneath the surface Al Qaeda received funding, and assistance from the CIA.(1)

The architects of the PATRIOT Acts, Homeland Security and the Global Police State legislation (H.R. 4104- The Intelligence Transformation Act) are writing the ever-changing cover-up narrative.

The White House fought all efforts to investigate 9-11, and tried to restrict the parameters of the investigation. Appointed to damage control were the CIA, Senator Bob Graham Congressman Porter Goss , and Henry Kissinger, who should have been investigated for their own role in 9-11.(Goss and Graham breakfasted with "the money man behind 9-11" on the morning of the attacks.) Neither Inquiry nor Commission has asked vigorously-

Why was the "money man behind 9-11," (who had $100,000 sent to Mohammed Atta- identified by the FBI as the lead pilot in the attacks), head of Pakistan's I.S.I., Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, meeting with top U.S. officials from September 4th through September 13th?

Why did the Bush Administration seek Pakistan's 'cooperation' in the "war on terrorism," despite the fact that the ISI was financing and abetting the 9-11 terrorists? One might say that it's like "asking Al Capone to help in going after organized crime."

Were there stand-down orders given to the military on 9-11, or were the War Games the military was playing that day designed to confuse and prevent interceptors from doing their job? Who was coordinating the War Games on September 11, 2001?

Why did officials react in such a bizarre manner to news of the attack, with Bush, Rumsfeld, and Myers carrying on as if nothing unusual was occurring?

Why were the men most responsible for the military failure on 9-11 rewarded with promotions, increased budgets, support for their imperial ambitions outlined in the Project for a New American Century?

As Pearl Harbor was used to justify the CIA, "the New Pearl Harbor" PNAC explicitly called for, 9-11, is being used for the swift military transformation of the country that they desire. 9-11 Truth is our hope against the rising "bipartisan" fascism in America, and against "The war that will not end in our lifetimes." Cheney believes "it's not necessary to suppress the truth forever, only until it doesn't matter anymore." The Truth matters now.

We have a responsibility to rein in our government, to expose their lies, criminal activities, and attacks upon our basic rights, our lives, our world. We have marched on our Representatives. We have marched to prevent illegal, immoral wars, to demand an investigation of 9-11, pre-emptive impeachment of Bush & Co., the repeal of the PATRIOT Act, to impeach the terrorists.

It is time to march again. We will not be silent. We must Blow the Whistle! And Support the Whistleblowers! Dissent is Not Terrorism! Repression is Not Security!

No to the Global Police State! NO to torture and fear. NO to empires, illegitimate governments, and stolen elections. NO to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and Palestine. NO to state-sponsored terrorism. NO to military madness. NO to the criminalization of dissent, the Patriot Act, the imprisonment of people of color and the racist system that divides us all.

YES to a world where all people can live with dignity, respect, and freedom. YES to real democracy that goes beyond voting. Yes to a World of True Security. Yes to-

Courage not Fear, Truth not Lies, Peace not War, Love not Hate, Democracy not Empire!

During the Republican National Convention, people opposing the RNC agenda are encouraged to blow the whistle on the hour and half hour, in non-violent solidarity with those marching, standing up, speaking out, blowing the whistle on the biggest criminals, to challenge the Lies, the 9-11 Cover-Up, the Police State, the Wars, the Crimes of a Regime that fears to relinquish power.
Carol Brouillet

www.globalresearch.ca 19 August 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BRO408A.html