Navy Crew Remembers 1967 Israeli Attack 5/22/04 AP: For the nearly 20 surviving crew members of the USS Liberty, a gathering after 37 years was as much about the future as it was about the past… ``We all believe we're finally getting to the point where the truth may be told and the world is ready to listen,'' said Cmdr. David Lewis, who oversaw intelligence on the ship and remembers most of the attack that left him with superficial burns and destroyed his eardrums."

Friday 5/21/04

Continuing the Cover-Up? Military Takes Action Against Key Witness in Abu Ghraib Abuse Scandal  5/21/04 ABC: "A witness who told ABCNEWS he believed the military was covering up the extent of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison was today stripped of his security clearance and told he may face prosecution because his comments were "not in the national interest." "

Friends in High Places: Fugitive Mercenary Makes Good in Iraq  5/21/04 Antiwar

US Wants One-Year Extension of UN Exemption from War Crimes Law  5/21/04 Antiwar

My Journey to Caxias How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture  5/21/04 Couterpunch

Son of a Sandista Charged with Desertion - Can Camilo Mejia Get a Fair Trial?  5/21/04 Couterpunch: "Mejia did, however, file for conscientious objector status. In his application, written, as noted by the Miami Herald's Elaine Del Valle, months before the photos from Abu Gharib surfaced, Mejia said he had witnessed similar acts of torture and abuse of Iraqis held at the Al Assad Air Force base."

'US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one'  5/21/04 Guradian: "Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq." The musician was, no doubt, a terrorist.

New front in Iraq detainee abuse scandal?  5/21/04 MSNBC: "According to two top U.S. government sources, it is the scene of the most egregious violations of the Geneva Conventions in all of Iraq’s prisons. A place where the normal rules of interrogation don’t apply, Delta Force’s BIF only holds Iraqi insurgents and suspected terrorists — but not the most wanted among Saddam’s lieutenants pictured on the deck of cards. These sources say the prisoners there are hooded from the moment they are captured. They are kept in tiny dark cells. And in the BIF’s six interrogation rooms, Delta Force soldiers routinely drug prisoners, hold a prisoner under water until he thinks he’s drowning, or smother them almost to suffocation."

www.bigbrother.gov  5/21/04 Seattle Weekly: "In the past 20 months, Harris has become America’s leading critic of electronic voting (see “Black Box Backlash,” March 10). Her reporting on the problems with new computer voting machines has been a key component in a national, grassroots movement to safeguard voting. Her astounding discoveries have resulted in important studies by distinguished computer scientists. She has been leaked thousands of pages of internal memos from Diebold Election Systems, one of the country’s leading electronic voting companies. She is frequently cited by newspapers across the country and is a guest on national and local television and radio stations. Thousands of people visit her Web site and participate in its reader forums. Now, Harris claims, the government wants our names, forum messages, and computer addresses."

Berg, Abu Ghraib/Why the focus is on the prison  5/21/04 Star Tribune, Minneapolis: "But there's another reason this story is gathering, rather than losing, steam: Top civilian and military officials in the U.S. government, many of them Republican, are fueling it. They were sickened by the abuse and the stains it has left on institutions they care about, and they are fed up with the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration. They have resented for a long time the cabal of neoconservatives who call the shots in this administration and who are responsible for the failures in Iraq."

The targets are Venezuela and Cuba: New Intrigues of US imperialism  5/21/04 Vheadlines

Thursday 5/20/04

Brazil to send 1,200 troops to Haiti  5/20/04 CNN

The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi Why the US Turned Against Their Former Golden Boy -- He was Preparing a Coup! What He Did as a Catspaw for Tehran: How He Nearly Bankrupted Jordan; the Billions He Stands to Make Out of the New Iraq  5/20/04 Counterpunch

To free Cuba, support Venezuelan referendum  5/20/04 CubaNet

The religious warrior of Abu Ghraib An evangelical US general played a pivotal role in Iraqi prison reform  5/20/04 Guardian, UK: "Saving General Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow last October. After it was revealed that the deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence had been regularly appearing at evangelical revivals preaching that the US was in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling "Satan", the furore was quickly calmed… Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, he was at the heart of a secret operation to "Gitmoize" (Guantánamo is known in the US as Gitmo) the Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo, where he met Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of Camp X-Ray. Boykin ordered Miller to fly to Iraq and extend X-Ray methods to the prison system there, on Rumsfeld's orders."

Alberto Garrido: President Hugo Chavez Frias is advancing the situation with Colombia because the United States of America is occupied in Iraq  5/20/04 Vheadlines: "The US "is terrified" because, if a problem explodes between Venezuela and Colombia, the price of crude could rise to levels so high that the world economy could spin out of control. President Chavez is managing the situation with that in mind."

Wednesday 5/19/04

Key Israeli distortions about "Operation Rainbow" in Rafah 5/19/04 Electronic Intifada

At least 9 demonstrators killed during huge march on Haiti’s Flag Day - Marchers face down US Marines, shout ‘Liberty or death,’ ‘Bring back Aristide’ 5/19/04 SF Bay View: "The demonstrators came out in massive numbers. They attempted to march peacefully and had no weapons, only the Haitian flag. But as the crowd got bigger, it is reported the Marines got madder and more surprised, more frustrated, and started shooting directly into the crowds. People in the hundreds of thousands were singing “Libete ou lamo” (Liberty or death) and refusing to be intimidated, even as their fellows kept being cut down by police and U.S. Marine bullets."

Tuesday 5/18/04

Definitely a Cover-Up  5/18/04 ABC: "According to Provance, some of the physical abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib included U.S. soldiers "striking [prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out. Then [the soldier] would go to the next detainee, who would be very fearful and voicing their fear, and the MP would calm him down and say, 'We're not going to do that. It's OK. Everything's fine,' and then do the exact same thing to him." "

Killing of Iraqi leader deals new blow to Bush  5/18/04 AFP: "The attack, outside the huge, heavily guarded headquarters of the US-led military and political authority in Baghdad, sent stock markets falling across Asia and Europe, pushed oil prices to a new record high and battered the dollar. "The fallout from events in Iraq is clearly having a negative impact on support for the US administration," Credit Agricole Indosuez currency strategist Mitul Kotecha said in London, where the greenback slumped from 1.1885 to the euro on Friday to 1.2034."

White Fear  5/18/04 Alternet: "In his just-published book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity, Huntington speaks about the meteoric rise of white nativism in America, for which he offers not an apology but a rationale: "The most powerful stimulus to such white nativism will be the cultural and linguistic threats whites see from the expanding power of Latinos in U.S. society." What Bronx residents and for that matter most of us don't know is that, in crossing the East River or the Rio Grande, Latinos have crossed a modern-day Rubicon into hostility and war in the eyes of some whites like Huntington. We Latinos are now living in the vast and varied terrain of white fear."

Plan for civilian military training decried  5/18/04 AP: "Venezuela's opposition denounced President Hugo Chavez's plan to give civilians military training as a thinly disguised attempt to create pro-government militias."

Pro-Aristide demonstration leaves one dead  5/18/04 AP: "Thousands of demonstrators called for the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Tuesday during a Flag Day rally that turned violent when riot police fired warning shots and tear gas. At least one man was killed."

For these vets, Senate abuse probe is personal  5/18/04 CSM: "One is a former secretary of the Navy. Another survived five years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison cell. A third, the only active reservist in the US Senate, served the Air Force as a prosecutor in Europe. Yet another gets her intelligence on the war direct from constituents serving in Iraq, via e-mail. This phalanx of Republican senators - John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine - are at the front lines of a bid to pursue the Iraq prison abuse scandal as far up the chain of command as it needs to go."

Kerry’s Secret Plan to End the War  5/18/04 Newsweek

Republican officials say Democrats subverting voting system purchase  5/18/04 Toledo Blade: "Two Republican officeholders criticized Democrats yesterday for trying to derail the planned purchase of a $4 million voting machine system by Lucas County. State Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) and Lucas County Auditor Larry Kaczala, a Republican candidate for Congress, said opponents are trying to undermine public confidence in the election process in advance of the fall election. But state Rep. Peter Ujvagi and state Sen. Teresa Fedor, both Toledo Democrats, said they want the county to have voting machines that can be recounted, and they want the county to check with other vendors."

Monday 5/17/04

Haiti, a man-made tragedy  5/17/04 AfroCubaWeb

Implausible Denial  5/17/04 Alternet: "Writing in the December 16, 2002, edition of The Nation, I broke the news – and explored the concerns many in the US intelligence community had – about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quiet success in prevailing upon Congress to authorize the creation of a new senior position at the Pentagon, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Several months later, in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review, I followed up with a piece devoted to the media's utter lack of interest – perhaps best demonstrated by the absence of any reporter from a farcical confirmation hearing – in the new Under Secretary himself, Stephen Cambone."

Honduran Prison Fires Kills 103 Inmates  5/17/04 AP

Italian troops driven from base  5/17/04 AP: "Fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr drove Italian forces from a base in the southern city of Nasiriyah on Sunday and attacked coalition headquarters there with grenade and mortar fire as tensions in the Shiite region escalated."

2004 Ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide  5/17/04 Center for Cooperative Research

Former Haiti police chief arrested  5/17/04 CNN: "U.S. federal agents have arrested Haiti's former national police chief in Miami, as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's ongoing investigation into drug trafficking in the Caribbean nation, according to a DEA spokesman and court documents."

Rumsfeld Knew: Iraq Prison Abuse Part of Pentagon-Approved Black Ops Program  5/17/04 Democracy Now: interview with Seymour Hersh, author of New Yorker pieces on the direction Rumsfeld and his aid Cambone gave to US torture policy.

Fahrenheit 9/11 could light fire under Bush  5/17/04 Guardian: "On Saturday he said: "The film is only partly to do with the Bin Ladens and Bush. I was able to send three different freelance film crews to Iraq. Soldiers had written to me to express their disillusionment with the war. It's a case of our own troops not being in support of their commander-in-chief." He said that at the few low-key preview screenings that have already taken place in the midwest "the reactions were overwhelming. People who were on the fence - undecided voters - suddenly weren't on the fence any more." "

The Roots of Torture  5/17/04 Newsweek: confirmation of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker articles - "The road to Abu Ghraib began after 9/11, when Washington wrote new rules to fight a new kind of war."

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to Democracies as against despots: suspicion." -- Demosthenes

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