Neil Mackay

"The British pictures show a hooded Iraqi aged between 18-20 on the floor of a military truck being brutalised. According to two squaddies who took part in the torture, but later blew the whistle, the Iraqi’s ordeal lasted eight hours and he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth. He was bleeding and vomited when his captors threw him out of a speeding truck. No-one knows if he lived or died." [more]

"Essential Viewing's technology has already been tested in the US by the military driving a robot around New York. Hardy said the robot looked like a multi-armed sophisticated bomb disposal vehicle, adding that the technology was down to 'some very scary maths'." [more]

"While the report alone seems to build a compelling case that oil is one of the central issues fuelling the war against Iraq, there are also other, circumstantial pieces of the jigsaw that show disturbing connections between 'black gold' and the Bush administration's desire to wage war on Saddam. In 1998 the oil equipment company Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was chief executive, sold parts to Iraq so Saddam could repair an infrastructure that had been terribly damaged during the 1991 Gulf war. Cheney's firm did £15 million of business with Saddam -- a man Cheney now calls a 'murderous dictator'. Halliburton is one of the firms thought by analysts to be in line to make a killing in any clean-up operation after another US-led war on Iraq." [more]

"The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'" [more]