- War in Middle East

For whose benefit must an execution be performed in an orderly and civilized manner? What strange token of respect is this to show someone, moments before violently ending their life?

In truth, the dignity, order, respect, and legal decorum, are there to protect everyone else. We are supposed to think that we have risen above a barbaric temperament because we disdain the tearing of limb from limb, burning at the stake, beheading, or any other such "inhumane" practices.

Where though is the humanity in collectively sanctioning a killing and then turning the other way as though we have such delicate sensibilities we could not bear to understand what is being done in our name?

Blair’s Deputy Calls Taunting of Hussein at Execution ‘Deplorable’

LONDON, Jan. 2 — Britain’s deputy prime minister said Tuesday that the taunting and baiting that accompanied Saddam Hussein’s execution was unacceptable and that the people responsible should be condemned for taking part.

“I think the manner was quite deplorable, really,” said the deputy prime minister, John Prescott. “I don’t think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment.”

Responding to the murky scenes that emerged after the execution showing witnesses and guards chanting and telling Saddam to “go to hell” as his executioners prepared to hang him, Mr. Prescott added: “Frankly, to get that kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable, and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.”

But in a terse exchange with an interviewer on BBC radio, Mr. Prescott refused to be drawn into criticizing the Iraqi government, which had custody of Mr. Hussein and which arranged his execution. “If they are responsible, I pass my comment and that’s where I stand,” he said.

Images of Mr. Hussein with a noose around his neck have been plastered across newspapers and shown on television all weekend here. In a country implacably opposed to the death penalty, the sight has been shocking, as was the speed with which it was carried out.

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BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) - Marching bands, children dressed as Santa Claus and clergymen in magenta skullcaps gathered in the center of Bethlehem on Sunday to celebrate Christmas Eve, doing their best to dispel the gloom hovering over Jesus' traditional birthplace.

In an annual custom, townspeople enacted Christmas rituals that seem out of place in the Middle East. Palestinian scouts marched through the streets, some wearing kilts and berets, playing drums and bagpipes. They passed inflatable Santas looking forlorn in the sunshine.

Other acts, however, could take place nowhere else. To get to the West Bank town, Michel Sabbah, the Roman Catholic Church's highest official in the Holy Land, rode in his motorcade through a huge steel gate in the Israeli barrier that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem.

Israel says it built the barrier to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli population centers. Palestinians view the structure, which dips into parts of the West Bank, as a land grab.

The robed clergyman was led into Palestinian-controlled territory by a formal escort of five Israeli policemen on horseback. Two officers of the Israeli Border Police closed the gate behind him.

"God wants us all to be peacemakers. He wants every believer who has faith in God - Jewish, Muslim or Christian - to work to make peace," Sabbah said in his annual Christmas address at his Jerusalem office before going to Bethlehem.

Bethlehem's tourist industry has been hit hard by six years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, construction of the barrier and internal Palestinian fighting.

How Israel put Gaza civilians in firing line

Military chiefs were warned that change of safety margin for gunners risked killing the innocent

"Israeli military commanders drastically reduced the 'safety' margins that separate artillery targets from the built-up civilian areas of Gaza earlier this year, despite being warned that the new policy risked increasing Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries, The Observer can reveal.

The warning, delivered in Israel's high court by six human rights groups, came after the Israeli Defence Force reduced the so-called 'safety range' in Gaza from a 300-metre separation from built-up areas to just 100 metres - within the kill radius of its 155mm high-explosive shells, generally regarded as being between 50 and 150 metres.

Disclosure of the new shelling policy, which went largely unnoted at the time, has emerged in international outcry over the latest artillery incident by Israeli gunners shelling Gaza - the killing of 19 members of an extended family in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. It was the highest Palestinian civilian toll in a single incident since the current conflict erupted in September 2000. The deaths were caused when what witnesses described as a volley of tank shells hit a built-up civilian area.

The revelation follows reports that the shelling of Gaza has continued despite the recent recognition by senior Israeli military officers, including the head of the IDF's Southern Command, that indirect artillery fire (ie, firing without seeing the target) was largely pointless in countering Palestinian rocket fire.

According to Human Rights Watch, since September 2005 Israel has fired about 15,000 rounds at Gaza while Palestinian militants have fired around 1,700 back. The latest disclosures come as an Arab-backed motion condemning Israel's Gaza offensive was being circulated for debate at the UN Security Council and amid widening demonstrations in capitals of the Middle East."

Did Israel Use Uranium Weapons?

Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?

We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know--after it first categorically denied using such munitions--that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory--and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry--used by the Ministry of Defence--which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.

UK paper: Israel used uranium bombs in Lebanon War

The British newspaper, The Independent, reported on Saturday that during this summer's war in Lebanon, Israel used uranium-based munitions, including uranium-tipped bunker-buster bombs.

According to the report, scientists found two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs which showed "elevated radiation signatures."

"The weapon was [either] some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ...[or it] was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium," Dr. Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, told The Independent.

A deadly scandal continues in Gaza

By Patrick Seale
Commentary by
Friday, October 27, 2006

Israel has killed 2,300 Gazans over the past six years, including 300 in the four months since Corporal Gilad Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters on June 25. The wounded can be counted in the tens of thousands. Most of the casualties are civilians, many of them children.

The killing continues on a daily basis - by tank and sniper fire, by air and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into Arab territory to ambush and murder, an Israeli specialty perfected over the past several decades.

How long will the "international community" allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the Occupied Territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the blackest stain on Israel's patchy record as a would-be democratic state.

Some form of intervention is urgently required, perhaps in the form of an international force on the border between Israel and Gaza, to protect each side from the other, to allow some air into the moribund Gaza economy, and to bring relief to a humanitarian catastrophe.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair - verbally, at least, a staunch supporter of a two-state solution - must feel a certain sense of guilt at having failed to persuade US President George W. Bush to advance the cause of Palestinian self-determination. By joining Bush in the invasion of Iraq, he may have imagined he could persuade the president to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He may have thought he had some sort of a deal. He was mistaken. He had counted without Washington's pro-Israeli neo-cons, and their influence on Bush's Middle East policy.

Far from reining in the Israeli hawks, messianic settlers, Arab-killers and expansionists, Bush gave them a completely free hand - and continues to do so.

This may explain why Blair, addressing his last Labor Party conference a month ago, announced that he would make resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the priority of his remaining time in office. Alas, no action has followed these brave words, save for a suggestion that Britain would help the Palestinians to build institutions.

Institutions? What fantasy world does Blair inhabit? One-and-a-half million Palestinians, two-thirds of them under the poverty line, suffering 45 percent unemployment, packed into a narrow strip of 360 square kilometers, are being besieged, starved, cut off from the world and bombed on a daily basis, and Blair talks about building Palestinian institutions! How about stopping the killing first? Does Britain's word count for nothing?

I have scoured British government Web sites and have found stirring speeches and statements by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and other officials about Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan, climate change and so forth, but not a word about the ongoing criminal subjugation of Gaza.

It has been left to Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, to describe Gaza as a "ticking bomb" and to warn of a social explosion. To end the shameful boycott of the democratically elected Hamas government, there are rumors that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, may appoint Munib al-Masri, a rich businessman from Nablus, to head a government of independent technocrats. At the time of writing, however, Hamas had not agreed to stand aside.

The endurance of Gaza is legendary, but even the bravest man must falter when he can no longer feed his children, and when his home is reduced to rubble.

The situation is all the more urgent because, according to reports from Israel, something bigger and still more lethal is in prospect. Fresh from the indiscriminate slaughter they unleashed on Lebanon this summer - and no doubt eager to efface the memory of that fiasco - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and the chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, are said to be about to launch a military offensive against Gaza, on a far larger scale than the bombardments and armored incursions of recent weeks and months.

Iraq better off under Saddam, says Blix

COPENHAGEN: Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday described the US-led invasion of Iraq as a "pure failure" that had left the country worse off than under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

In unusually harsh comments to Danish newspaper Politiken, the diplomatic Swede said the US government had ended up in a situation in which neither staying nor leaving Iraq were good options.

"Iraq is a pure failure," Blix was quoted as saying. "If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time, it doesn't seem that the United States can help to stabilise the situation by staying there."

War-related violence in Iraq has grown worse, with dozens of civil-ians, government officials and police and security force members being killed every day. At least 83 US soldiers have been killed in October - the highest monthly toll this year.

Bloodletting continues in southern Iraq

A city racked by a weekend of violence braces for more after another apparent vengeance killing.

BAGHDAD — A militia chief's brother, kidnapped last week in an apparent act of vengeance that sparked a two-day battle over control of a southern Iraqi city, was found dead Monday amid signs of simmering unrest between rival Shiite Muslim groups that is undermining security in the relatively stable south.

At least 50 other Iraqis were killed or found dead around the country during the day as part of relentless political violence that has marked the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is just ending.

Mounting U.S. and Iraqi casualties have spurred calls for changes to America's political and military policy in Iraq. In Washington, the White House on Monday sought to play down suggestions that the U.S. was pressuring the Iraqi government to set benchmarks and deadlines for gaining political and military control.

Officials said the Bush administration was flexible and seeking to adjust course as needed. There were "practical conversations going on" with Iraqi leaders, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said. "But is the United States saying, 'Here's your drop-dead date?' Of course not."

Must-See Video: The Iraq War in 8 Minutes

A new video shot for a London newspaper and the BBC by an embed with the U.S. Army, suggests, in chilling words and images, the absurd position of the U.S. in Iraq, as the people we try to train -- you know, our comrades in arms -- seem more intent on lobbing grenades at us.

By Greg Mitchell

(October 22, 2006) -- Over the years, I have made few requests of readers of this column, beyond hinting that, maybe, you ought to return here from time to time. But now I have to urge you to drop everything, finish reading this come-on, and then link to the video described below. It’s the most revealing little (eight-minute) video I’ve seen yet on our country’s preposterous position in Iraq.

Aptly, it is titled, "Iraq: The Real Story." It won’t turn your stomach, in fact, you may even chuckle in spots (like you might have done in reading much of “Catch-22”). But, hopefully, you will end up screaming at the computer screen.

That’s partly because it arrives at such a critical moment, with the death counts for both Americans and Iraqis soaring, and the debate over what to do about this catastrophe reaching a fever pitch, even before the election of a new Congress.

For more of article

erman ministers 'knew about CIA torture cells'

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Published: 25 October 2006

The German government is alleged to have received first-hand evidence that the CIA began torturing terrorist suspects at secret prisons in Europe shortly after the September 11 attacks, despite claiming it only knew about such sites through the media.

Stern magazine quoted a leaked German intelligence report yesterday which said that only weeks after September 11 2001, two agents and a translator visited a US military prison at the American "Eagle Base" in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, where they saw a torture victim.

The German intelligence report said US interrogators at the base had beaten a 70-year-old terrorist suspect with rifle butts and that "his injuries meant that he had to be given 20 stitches to the head wound he sustained". The report said the American interrogator responsible "appeared to be proud" of his actions.

Stern said the German intelligence agents had been given access to documents confiscated by the Americans which were "smeared with blood". One German agent was said to have compared the actions of the US interrogators to Serbian war criminals during the break up of Yugoslavia. "The Serbs ended up before the international court in The Hague for this kind of thing," he was quoted as saying.

The two German agents and their translator had been asked to appear at the base to help the Americans interrogate suspects and help evaluate confiscated material. But according to the leaked report, they immediately informed Germany's federal prosecutor of what they had witnessed and left the base shortly afterwards. The magazine's report appeared to directly contradict the German government's claims that it had only been made aware of the possible existence of secret CIA interrogation centres in Europe through media reports. Stern said that German intelligence, the country's Federal Criminal Bureau and German military intelligence had all been informed about the agents' visit to "Eagle Base". All three agencies refused to comment on the Stern report yesterday.

Germany was heavily criticised last year for allowing CIA prisoner rendition flights to stop over in the country. The German parliament is currently considering opening an investigation into allegations by a former terrorist suspect held prisoner by the US in Afghanistan that German special forces assisted in his interrogation.

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