Iraq

"'Every single thing the U.S. did led to civil war,' says Christian Parenti, author of 'The Freedom,' his account of occupied Iraq. 'The failure of reconstruction, the firing of the army, the blatant theft of Iraqi oil money, the use of the Badr Brigade, the use of Peshmerga, the use of death squads, the use of indiscriminate detention and torture, the destruction of Falluja and other towns in Al Anbar province,' explains Parenti, created a raging insurgency and sparked civil war. [more]

"The Eco-village was the epicenter of brilliant tactical coordination. This was a result of months of reconnaissance work and a chaotic yet functional plan of blockading that provided both fluidity and agility. As soon as a report would come in that one blockade was breaking or being threatened by the police, the transportation team would have vehicles ready to take people to the location and reinforce the blockade." [more]

"Small teams, each composed of about 10 U.S. servicemembers, will be attached to Iraqi units at the battalion level and above, the officer said today, speaking on background. [...] Such tactics are nothing new. Special operations forces have used similar approaches for decades. What makes the situation in Iraq different, according to the officer, is that conventional troops, such as infantry or artillery soldiers, will serve as advisers." [more]

"I heard that 15,000 US troops invaded Fallujah while planes dropped 500-pound bombs on ‘insurgent targets’. I heard they destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city, killing 20 doctors. I heard they occupied Fallujah General Hospital, which the military had called a ‘centre of propaganda’ for reporting civilian casualties. I heard that they confiscated all mobile phones and refused to allow doctors and ambulances to go out and help the wounded. I heard they bombed the power plant to black out the city, and that the water was shut off. I heard that every house and shop had a large red X spray-painted on the door to indicate that it had been searched." [more]

"Rather than extremist foreign fighters battling to the death, the marines are mostly finding local men from Falluja who are fighting to defend their city from what they view as an illegitimate occupier." [more]

Summary of Iraqi domestic press from December 27, 2004 to December 19, 2004. [more]

"If we study the recent propaganda war waged by Iran's enemies, we will see that it demonstrates their renewed use of old tricks that America has used for the past 25 years. Iran is very familiar with these tricks. However, as to why such accusations are raised at this time, it must be clearly connected with America's defeat in Iraq and the failure of the White House to force Iran to accept the unconditional surrender of its nuclear program." [more]

Interview with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Dr Iyad Allawi by Raja Talab and Ghayth al-Tarawinah; place, date not given: "Allawi: The Prophet's Family Is an Element Unifying the Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs, and Kurds" [more]

"The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible." [more]

In a characteristically unwitting way, President George W. Bush himself stumbled upon a resolution of the seeming paradox when he told Time magazine’s interviewer last summer that the war had proved to be a “catastrophic success.” By that oxymoron, he sought to convey the idea that in the invasion the U.S. military forces had overcome the enemy unexpectedly quickly, “being so successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in, escaped and lived to fight another day.” [more]

"The FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners." [more]

"Hoshyar Zibari and Barham Salih will keep their posts after elections." [more]

"Nine Coalitions and 81 Political Entities Presented Lists of Their Candidates For National Assembly. Four Political Entities Withdrew, and Three Entities Changed Their Status and Joined Existing Coalitions" [more]

"The deals were agreed as three Polish soldiers were killed in Iraq Wednesday and four injured when their Sokol helicopter made an emergency landing south of Baghdad." [more]

The planned election will change the political composition of Iraq to suit the interests of the occupation authorities. The change will also lead to ethnic, sectarian and religious divisions that the Iraqi state and people had succeeded to avoid. [more]

With more than 90 people killed in the last three days in a spike of unrest despite the end of US-led assaults on rebel cities south and west of Baghdad, Sunni Muslim Iraqis also stepped up calls to delay January's landmark polls. [more]

Occupation is the opposite of democracy, for it is a way of deciding, through military force, the future and laws of the country. Occupation undermines Iraq's right to independence, sovereignty, and self-determination, a right upheld by international laws and defended by the resolve of our people. [more]

This "war of posters and banners", as one Iraqi politician puts it, is about the only visible sign that this is a country which is due to go to the polls less than eight weeks from now. The Iraqi electorate, who are still trying to come to terms with a ruthless US military machine working flat out to destroy what remains of ordinary life in the name of fighting "insurgents", are simply irrelevant to pre- election campaigning activities. [more]

"During the last three years, this holocaust has not only spread wider but also been given a general acceptability, to such an extent that now it seems to be a matter of routine even when several hundred Muslims are slaughtered in a single day." [more]

Unfortunately, Iraq is then likely to descend into chaos and civil war. So despite Bush administration boasting of killing 1,200 guerrillas in Falluja, the future of Iraq looks grim indeed. [more]

Iraq and neighbours Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey signed off on the document in a closed-door meeting Monday, with the Egyptian hosts turning down any last-minute amendments. The text was put to the rest of the delegates Tuesday for approval. [more]

Countries such as France which opposed the invasion argue that the presence of US and other international forces contributes towards the violence, and a timetable should be set for them to leave. [more]

The purpose of the Falluja campaign was to pacify the strategic Sunni triangle in time for the elections planned for January. By ridding Falluja of foreign fighters and hard-core Saddamists, the Pentagon believed it could blunt the insurgency by denying it a key staging center. It also believed it could help the Allawi government lure disgruntled Sunnis back into the political process. On the basis of what we've seen so far, the campaign has failed on both counts. [more]

Germany's finance minister has said that he and his US counterpart have reached an agreement under which Iraq's creditors would write off up to 80% of the war-ravaged country's debt. [more]

"In a departure from protocol, the International Committee of the Red Cross urged all warring parties to comply with international humanitarian law and let aid workers carry out their duties. The damning indictment by one of the world’s most respected humanitarian aid organisations comes as a US official warned it would be difficult to hold elections in January unless the situation improved." [more]

"'I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.' He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he 'helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands.'" [more]

"The first assault on Fallujah was a military failure. This time, the resistance is stronger, better-armed, and better-organized; to 'win,' the U.S. military will have to pull out all the stops." [more]

Mr Annan is reported to have said in his letters that: “The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation.” [more]

"Doctors said people brought in at least 15 dead civilians at the main clinic in Falluja on Monday. By Tuesday, there were no clinics open, residents said, and no way to count casualties." [more]

"The word on the street that the resistance was mostly out of Falluja prior to this battle is verified by the Iraqi Minister of Defense himself. The fire had begun to spread long before the current onslaught of Falluja." [more]

"What I believe is ... likely to be done to Falluja will be a war crime and crime against humanity, morally indefensible by any civilized standard or for that matter, by the Statute of the International Criminal Court (to which, conveniently, neither the US nor Iraqi Government adheres)." [more]

"There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days." [more]

"The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble. Hospital officials quoted by Reuters news agency say all the contents were ruined." [more]

"Comrade Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, deputy secretary general of the Iraq Command of the Ba'th Party, head of the Higher Jihad Committee, and commander of the armed resistance in sisterly Iraq, has addressed a message full of nationalist, jihadist, and religious spirit to all men of resistance and jihad in the land of the two rivers." [more]

With all of the attention on Iraq and Afghanistan, with elections much in the news in those nations as well as in the United States, it is easy to lose sight of the U.S.’s long-term policies as recently projected by the Bush Administration and American military planners. [more]

The British government formally withdrew one of the key arguments it had used for invading Iraq, as it faced demands in parliament for a "full apology" on how it presented the case for war. [more]

Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result. [more]

For all the talk of the rapid reconstruction of Iraq, this is the central dilemma facing Hajim al-Hassani, the man now in charge of Iraq's industry. Most of the industries he oversees are hugely inefficient and over-staffed, but sacking thousands of workers would only worsen the already dangerous security crisis. [more]

"Many of the arguments wedding the war in Iraq with a strategy for neoliberal expansion are not readily convincing. They risk reading causality into tangential relationships. And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and the policy preferred by many business elites." [more]

The free market will no doubt come to Iraq, but the neoconservative dream of transforming the country into a free-market utopia has already died, a casualty of a greater dream—a second term for George W. Bush. [more]

Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. [more]

[The] comments come a day after Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, said that Iraqi elections cannot be held if the country's current instability persists. [more]

"Iraq has reinstated the death penalty for murderers and those threatening national security, according to a US-appointed, interim Iraqi government spokesman." [more]

"While Pakistanis swiftly condemned the terrorists' tactics, they said they saw Iraq as an American problem, not a Pakistani one. They also gave credence to the idea that unfair American acts in Iraq, beginning with the invasion, have led people there to adopt terrorism, a view sharply rejected by Washington." [more]

"More than 110 people were killed and dozens injured in suicide bombings and clashes on Wednesday as Iraq's interim government ended its first month in office amid deepening violence and hostage crisis." [more]

A spokesperson "despaired that military campaigns were employing 'hearts and minds' strategies more and more often, making it difficult for aid workers to maintain their aura of all-important impartiality. If armies are handing out food assistance and medical equipment, it becomes harder for locals to tell the aid workers from the occupiers." [more]

A fundamental question was whether the human rights convention "applies to the forces of a European state outside the territory of the council of Europe". A second such question was whether the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the convention into UK domestic law, could only be enforced in the territory of the UK, and not in Iraq. [more]

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them." [more]

To those who are sceptical of Kurdish intentions in Iraq, perhaps it should be emphasised that when we talk of federalism in Iraq, we do not necessarily mean to imply that the Iraqi Kurds have separatist tendencies. After all, the Kurds have already been quasi-independent from the central government in Baghdad for the past decade. [more]

The Democrats on the committee foolishly bought into an agreement that will likely postpone a committee report on that more important issue until after the election. Yet voters would profit from information about whether the Bush administration pressured the intelligence community or exaggerated, twisted the truth or even lied about the Iraqi threat in its rush to justify war. [more]

Although the U.S. military believes that the “center of gravity” in the continuing Iraq War is the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, the Iraqi insurgents believe, as did the North Vietnamese almost 40 years ago, that the center of gravity lies with the hearts and minds of the American people. [more]

"We say that had the nation sharpened its swords, stood on its feet, gathered its armies, and moved toward Washington to seek revenge, and had the slaying (of Berg) incident followed all the above, deflecting the winds and scattering the armies, then matters would have taken another course. But where is my nation? Can my nation not see what is happening to Muslims in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Chechen Republic, and others?" [more]

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is prepared to offer amnesty to the country's insurgents, even those who have attacked and killed U.S. forces, in a surprise bid to co-opt the resistance and demonstrate the appointed interim government's independence from the unpopular Americans. [more]

"Nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance." [more]

"In a report this week, the General Accounting Office said that 'contracts worth billions of dollars in Iraqi funds have not been independently reviewed.'It also questioned what control over U.S.-approved contracts would now exist with the handover of formal sovereignty to Iraqis." [more]

"A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the [Halabja] massacre, and indicates that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the role of the British government has gathered evidence that following the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter the Iranians chemicals for chemicals." [more]

Two parallels between our Revolution and today’s insurgency in Iraq come to mind. One, based in myth, would lead its advocates to folly, while the other deserves serious consideration. [more]

"The most important tools being used by the Bush administration to maintain varying degrees of economic and political control in Iraq are the 100 Orders enacted by L. Paul Bremer, III, head of the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) before his departure. ... Bremer also ensured the implementation of the Orders by stacking every Ministry with U.S.-appointed authorities with five-year terms—well into the period of the new, elected government." [more]

"Allawi will fight a different war to Washington's. The US refused to listen last year, when he counselled against disbanding Saddam's army, a move that sent 500,000 angry gunmen into the community and denied the country an army to fight them. ... Ominously, he is restructuring security and intelligence in the image of what Saddam had." [more]

"In a few key areas — electricity, the judicial system and overall security — the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday." [more]

"It is perhaps not strange then that Allawi, who built his exile organization with defecting Iraqi military officers, is already proclaiming the need to delay elections scheduled for January and impose martial law. On Monday Bush said coalition forces would support such a call for martial law, presumably enforced by U.S. troops." [more]

"The Bremer who waved from the steps of his departing C-130 did not only leave sovereignty, in the form of a terse two-paragraph letter, with the Iraqis. He left 160,000 foreign troops, a broken economy and a land beset by ruthless, reckless armed bands." [more]

Paul Bremer, the outgoing proconsul, patted himself and his Bush administration employers on the back by bragging that there was “no question the liberation of Iraq was a great and noble thing.” Unfortunately, Iraqis are not feeling so liberated and have not been fooled by the faux handover of governance. [more]

"The Bush Administration directed the Marines to draft a detailed plan, called Operation Stuart, for the arrest and, if necessary, assassination of Sadr. But the operation was cancelled, the former intelligence official told me, after it became clear that Sadr had been 'tipped off' about the plan. Seven months later, after Sadr spent the winter building support for his movement, the American-led coalition shut down his newspaper, provoking a crisis that Sadr survived with his status enhanced, thus insuring that he will play a major, and unwelcome, role in the political and military machinations after June 30th." [more]

"A new book by an author going by the name Anonymous (a senior US intelligence official), contains an outright and strong condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy [...] The book, due out in the first week of July, titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are 'on the run' and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer." [more]

All of the Bush administration’s quibbling about the definition of the word “relationship” is as ridiculous as President Clinton’s hair-splitting over the definition of the word “is” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. [more]

"According to documents posted on its own web site, the CPA's little-known Program Review Board (PRB) has quietly committed billions of dollars in Iraq's oil revenues to new contracts that critics say will enrich US and British corporations while limiting the amount of revenue Iraq's new interim government will have at its disposal when it assumes authority from the CPA on June 30." [more]

A memo dated October 9, 2003 on "Interrogation Rules of Engagement", which each military intelligence officer was obliged to sign, set out in detail the wide range of pressure tactics they could use - including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days. [more]

"The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials." [more]

The Bush administration is trying to make Tenet a sacrificial lamb for its blundering into an Iraqi quagmire. But that ill-advised military adventure was actually championed by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and their subordinates. [more]

Angry Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Ashcroft to provide the document, saying leaked portions that have appeared in news reports suggest the Bush administration is reinterpreting U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture. [more]

If, as war supporters claim, our goals in Iraq (now that we've lost the rationale of hunting down weapons of mass destruction) are stability and democracy, we are proceeding in exactly the wrong way. [more]

In the battles for the Sunni town of Falluja and the Shiite cities south of Baghdad, the Bush administration has essentially capitulated—hoping to reduce, until the U.S. election is over, images of fighting, mayhem and U.S. blood streaming to the American public. [more]

"Before the US attack against Iraq, and the collapse of Saddam, Muqtada al-Sadr's political clout and the number of his supporters were unknown to the Americans." [more]

And then he quoted an Arabic expression that went something like this: Either I live and make my friends feel happy, or I die and make my enemies feel bad. [more]

"[Prime Minister] Iyad Allawi is the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, a group formed by Iraqi exiles, many former Baath Party members who had fled the country. / Born in 1945 to a prominent Shia Muslim merchant family, he trained as a neurologist. Mr Allawi is seen as being historically close to the US, particularly the CIA, although he has been critical of the US-led coalition in recent months." [more]

"There is no social entity called Iraq that benefited from some self-sacrifice it suffered for its own greater good, like a patient who voluntarily endures some pain to be better off than before. There were only individual human beings living in Iraq before the war, with their individual lives. Sacrificing the lives of some of them for the benefit of others killed them and benefited the others. Nothing more. Each of those Iraqis killed in the war was a separate person, and the unfinished life each of them lost was the only life he or she had, or would ever have. They clearly are not better off now that Saddam is gone from power." [more]

The Germany chancellor has signaled that under certain conditions he would approve the resolution, which the United States presented to the United Nations Security Council on Monday. But he has also made clear that Germany would not send troops to the war-torn country even with the blessing of the UN... [more]

Friday, with 20 of its 23 members present, the Governing Council unanimously endorsed Allawi. There were no other candidates. [more]

"Unlike early reports suggesting the abuses were failings by individual soldiers, Provance told the AP and other media outlets that interrogators at the prison viewed sleep deprivation, stripping inmates naked and threatening them with dogs as normal ways of dealing with 'the enemy.'" [more]

"What Bush seemed to have in mind was applying his broad doctrine of pre-emption to interrogations: to get information that could help stop terrorist acts before they could be carried out. This was justified by what is known in counterterror circles as the 'ticking time bomb' theory—the idea that when faced with an imminent threat by a terrorist, almost any method is justified, even torture." [more]

The president is somehow deluded that a fake turnover of power to a puppet interim government—to replace the widely discredited U.S.-picked Governing Council—will take the fire out of the guerrilla insurgency... [more]

"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror." [more]

If today the U.S. government were to put itself on trial, on the same basis it employed to try the Nazis at Nuremberg, for actions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, it might have to convict itself—if only for the sake of consistency. [more]

Despite widespread ill-feeling about the abuse of prisoners by American forces and allegations of mistreatment by British troops, coalition forces will be protected from any legal action. [more]

Font, [his lawyer], told jurors the soldier believed that "because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore." [more]

"Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire." [more]

"In her role as dominatrix over Iraqi men England exposed the sexualization of national conquest. As a participant in the militarized construction of the masculine she inaugurated a brand new, frightening archetype: dominant-nation female as joyful agent of sexual, national, racial and religious humiliation. How’s that for liberation?" [more]

So what can the United States do to dampen the insurgency and avoid a potential civil war? Something that the Bush administration and the Washington foreign policy establishment have avoided like the plague: rapid U.S. troop withdrawal and genuine and complete self-determination for Iraqis... [more]

"The tortures at Abu Ghraib have exposed to the world the utter moral bankruptcy of Bush's war. Far from being fought on behalf of Iraqi democracy, it is a war for U.S. supremacy in which racist dehumanization and brutalization of Arabs and Muslims play an absolutely central role." [more]

"The torture is not limited to the Abu Ghurayb prison and other jails all over that afflicted homeland. The occupation itself has become the instrument of torture and major destruction that is directed against the Iraqi people, their achievements, and culture." [more]

"'We have not attacked the shrine of Imam Ali. We continue to respect the Shrine of Imam Ali,' said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition./ 'If there’s a hole in the shrine, go ask Muqtada who put that hole in the shrine. ... I would put money on Muqtada’s forces having caused it,' he said." [more]

The High Court ruling coincided with a report from Amnesty International claiming British forces had shot and killed 37 Iraqi civilians when they were under no apparent threat. [more]

"Although no principle stands higher in military doctrine than that the commander bears full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, neither Bush nor Rumsfeld, the two top military commanders, has the decency to resign — not just on account of the prison disclosures, of course, but also on account of the plethora of actions by which they have abused their constitutional powers and brought everlasting shame upon the United States." [more]

"The Americans in the photographs are not enacting hatred; hatred can coexist with respect, however strained. What they display, instead, is contempt: their victims are merely objects." [more]

As for the members of Congress holding the hearings, they seemed more concerned about the release of the photos than with the barbaric behavior depicted in them. Would the behavior have been more acceptable if no photos or videos had been taken of it? Hardly. [more]

"The picture [the Army report] draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority." [more]

"Security officials estimate there are about 15,000 mercernaries now in Iraq from Canada, U.S., Britain, Australia and South Africa./ 'Everyone is getting a piece of the action,' Ram said." [more]

"Unscrupulous agents (...) who smuggle Indian workers into Iraq appear to have found good business partners in the US forces, who need cheap labour." [more]

"The pictures of American soldiers humiliating Iraqi detainees are reminiscent of sadomasochistic porn — and we should not be surprised." [more]

"Job openings on CACI's Web site yesterday included 'interrogator' - two years of law enforcement experience and a top-secret clearance required - as well as other jobs that in an earlier era might have been limited to the CIA: 'senior counterintelligence agent' and 'senior intelligence analyst.' All the jobs are in Baghdad." [more]

"'There was one CD going round our room with about 500 shots on it. Some were before and after pictures of beatings.'" [more]

"Security is hoped to emerge from reconstruction, but successful reconstruction itself depends on security. But the government's 'Doing Business in Iraq' presentation claims the scope of violent conflict in Iraq has been overstated. 'Watching BBC or CNN would make you believe that Iraq is a no-man's land,' one of the first slides in the presentation states. 'The situation in Baghdad is not what it appears in the news media.'" [more]

"One source said the Pentagon had 60 photographs from Abu Ghraib jail depicting instances of abuse more violent than those that had been released to the media./ 'The ones seen so far are the mild ones that people can live with,' the source said. One photo allegedly depicts an Iraqi teenage boy being raped by a private contractor hired by the US military." [more]

"Arabs are angry when they see dead Iraqi infants with half their skulls blown away due to missile strikes. The Arab satellite channels convey this reality, they don't manufacture it. If Arabs are increasingly angry at the US - which they certainly are - this is almost totally due to the consequences of US military and political policies, not the reporting of these policies by Arab television." [more]

In any unnecessary war, the leaders of the attacking side are morally responsible for all deaths in the enemy military: accidental killings of civilians (the military euphemism is “collateral damage”) as well as abuses by rogue elements of those same groups toward enemy prisoners... [more]

"The communist resistance fighter said that it is comical to call them terrorists. He said that this is a war of independence. He said, "Just like what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk did". By now, I firmly believed that they were resistance fighters. He introduced his friends, who are fighting together in the Al-Fallujah region, with their professions: Architect, computer engineer, officer, and medical student." [more]

"'Tillman gave up millions of dollars,' Rall added. 'To that extent I think he's admirable, but the cause is not. ... He would have been a better person and a better husband if he took the $3.6 million and played football and left the poor and beleaguered people of Afghanistan and Iraq alone.'" [more]

"Practices such as lying to prisoners, intimidating them, screaming at them, stripping them, hiding their faces under hoods, and depriving them of toiletries and comforts are permissible to a degree if there is a valid reason, Ritz said./ But he drew the line at the sort of excesses allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, such as sodomizing prisoners with a broom and forcing them to simulate and commit sex acts." [more]

"'The Americans are dogs,' he says. 'They try to kill anybody who works in humanitarian aid. They attack any humanitarian aid worker, doctor, or ambulance to kill him.' Many more bodies continue to rot under buildings that collapsed under U.S. bombing, he says." [more]

The war in Iraq shares parallels with both the Vietnam War a generation ago and the Spanish-American War a century earlier—massive civilian deaths and torture are characteristics of all three imperial interventions... The estimates of civilians killed in the Philippines range from 200,000 to a high of perhaps 600,000 — no one really knows... [more]

"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]

"Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as 'one of the best.' The Army investigation confirms that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were not trained at all in Geneva Convention rules." [more]

"It is clear that the American war crimes will not reach the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Today, America sets the world's moral standards. It alone decides who will be judged, who is a terrorist, what is legitimate resistance to occupation, who is a religious fanatic, and who is a legitimate target for assassination. That is how four Iraqi children, who laughed at the sight of a dead American soldier, merited being killed on the spot." [more]

"Many Iraqis have strongly criticized [the new flag], complaining that it does not sufficiently represent Iraqi civilization and its Arab majority, gives too much importance to the Kurdish minority, and that its pale blue color makes it look like Israel's flag." [more]

"Mr Jensby, 59, becomes the first minister from a coalition nation to be forced from office over public concerns that the war was based on flawed intelligence. Denmark has about 500 troops in southern Iraq." [more]

"On his tense relationship with Bremer and whether this is the beginning of a 'mutiny' by the Iraqis against the Coalition Authority, Chalabi says: 'My relations with Ambassador Bremer are good.' They may differ on some points, he clarifies, but there is no 'mutiny.'" [more]

"Rebel Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said today that he could unleash suicide bombers if U.S. forces attacked the southern city of Al-Najaf, and called on the entire country to unite to expel Iraq's occupiers." [more]

Part of the problem, a British officer said, is that Americans tend to see the Iraqis as “untermenschen,” the term for “sub-humans.” [more]

The US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, acknowledged Friday that mistakes had been made in the occupation of the country and invited former Iraqi army officers who served under ousted president Saddam Hussein to help establish a new national force. [more]

"The Bush Administration has no intention of allowing the kind of Iraqi self-rule and self-determination invoked by the president in his speeches over the last year and a half." [more]

"Bush and Zapatero held a telephone conversation on Monday. According to a White House spokesman, Bush cautioned Zapatero to avoid actions that might give 'false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq.'" [more]

"Iran said on Sunday that America’s iron-fisted policies and the lack of security undermined Iranian efforts to bring calm to Iraq and that it would no longer cooperate with Washington on those endeavors." [more]

"All vehicles not belonging to the US military will be fired on according to US military command. The move over the weekend is likely to cause massive dislocation by preventing Iraqis using the highways north and south of Baghdad — the main economic lifelines of the country — where insurgents have launched frequent attacks. The main roads to Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait will be cut." [more]

"The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the deadly insurgency that flared this month is 'a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq' and an effort to undermine the country's transition to self-government." [more]

"Negroponte, 64, has a reputation as a hardened diplomat who attracted considerable controversy as the US ambassador to Honduras in the early Eighties when he was instrumental in assisting the Contras overthrow a leftist regime in Nicaragua. He has always denied allegations that he turned a blind eye to human rights violations, including death squads, in the region in that period." [more]

"It's unclear whether Naimi's death is connected to Iran's efforts at mediating the standoff between U.S. forces and radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the man at the centre of recent violence in Najaf." [more]

"US President George W. Bush stopped short of accusing Hizbullah of having a direct link to Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in his statement on the situation in Iraq, but his mention of the party comes amid increased speculation in the West over links between the two groups." [more]

As of today the United States military appears committed to an open-ended stay in a country where, with the exception of the Kurdish north, patience with the foreign occupation is running out, and violent opposition is spreading. Civil war and the breakup of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy. [more]

"An Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today." [more]

"Iraq's national security advisor, Muaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shiite, also accused both channels of inciting violence among the country's ethnic groups with their reporting and warned that they, and any other 'irresponsible' Arab media, could be banned from reporting from Iraq." [more]

"At least 80 foreign mercenaries — security guards recruited from the US, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies — have been killed in the past eight days. The occupation authorities have kept the figures secret." [more]

"Iraqi casualties are being buried in soccer fields, where mourners cry 'martyr, martyr' as they're interred./ Most of the dead Iraqis were not fighters, al-Issawi told The Associated Press." [more]

"According to a high-ranking government official, between last October and early this year, when Korea was promoting the dispatch of troops for the reconstruction of Iraq, the United States clarified several times that such military aid would not necessary and instead requested combat troops." [more]

A study published on October 29th in the Lancet, a British medical journal, suggests the death toll is quite a lot higher than the newspaper reports suggest. The centre of its estimated range of death tolls—the most probable number according to the data collected and the statistics used—is almost 100,000. [more]

"When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area..." [more]

"Shares in all sectors drew selling amid mounting security fears fueled by the kidnapping of the Japanese nationals by a terrorist group in Iraq, brokers said." [more]

"The Sunni-Shiite divide, already narrower in Iraq than in some parts of the Muslim world, is by all accounts shrinking each day that Iraqis agree their most immediate problem is the occupation. Many here say that, whatever value there was in deposing Saddam Hussein, the Americans have exhausted their goodwill and fueled suspicions by staying too long and producing too little progress." [more]

"'We denounced the military operations carried out by the American forces [in Al-Fallujah] because in effect it is [inflicting] collective punishment on the residents of Al-Fallujah,' Pachachi said. 'We consider the action carried out by U.S. forces [in Al-Fallujah] illegal and totally unacceptable.'" [more]

"When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, one of its chief concerns was preventing a civil war between Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in the country, and Sunni Muslims, who held all the power under Saddam Hussein. Now the fear is that the growing uprising against the occupation is forging a new and previously unheard of level of cooperation between the two groups — and the common cause is killing Americans." [more]

"The fighting erupted when a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque hit a US military vehicle Wednesday, US Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said./ US Marines fired a rocket and dropped a 225-kg, laser-guided bomb on the mosque. Part of a wall surrounding the mosque was destroyed, witnesses said." [more]

"...within hours, Brig-Gen Kimmitt’s stance was undermined by members of the Iraqi Governing Council, who said they had discussed a proposal to drop the prosecution of Sadr if he agreed to halt a Shiite uprising./ The council added that using more force against the cleric and his followers could lead to greater civilian casualties and bolster his support." [more]

"Senator Richard Lugar, of Bush's own Republican Party, told a weekend U.S. television news show that 'I would have thought there would be a more comprehensive plan.... The fact is that we don't know what we are going to do' in Iraq." [more]

"Iraqi police in the city visited mosques dropping off leaflets in Arabic from the US military, telling residents that there was a daily 7pm to 6am curfew. They ordered them not to congregate in groups or carry weapons, even if they were licensed. They instructed people that if US forces enter their homes, they should gather in one room and, if they want to talk to the troops, to have their hands up." [more]

"A protest march on a Spanish coalition base near the holy city of Najaf ended in violence in which a coalition soldier from El Salvador and one from the US were killed along with about 20 Iraqis. Many more were injured." [more]

"The correct moral to draw from al-Qaeda's involvement in Afghanistan is not the danger of rogue states but the danger of failed ones where the collapse of the central government allowed a lightly armed but highly motivated group of fanatics to seize control. Rather than resolve the problem of Afghanistan's lack of effective authority, however, Bush simply treated a symptom and left the disease in place. Now, not only are Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders still at large, the possibility that they and their allies will gain control over a substantial portion of Afghan territory remains quite real." [more]

"'Effectively he [Moqtada al-Sadr] is attempting to establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority. We will not tolerate this,' Bremer said. 'We will reassert the law and order which the Iraqi people expect.'" [more]

Richard Clarke and the lessons of Iraq. [more]

"And it's not just the foreigners - South Africans, who know they are breaking their country's laws on mercenary activity; skilled Gurkhas and Fijians who can't resist the dollars; or the Chileans who trained under General Pinochet - who are involved./ Beneath all of that is a dubious layer of Iraqi-run security - hundreds of local firms that have the capacity to become clan-based militias if, as some expect, security worsens after the June 30 hand-back of sovereignty to an Iraqi administration." [more]

"What 3,500 Korean soldiers will do in this area, a year after the end of the regular war, has become unclear. The area wasn't beat up during the war, so there isn't much to reconstruct, and major construction projects aren't the job of gun-carrying soldiers." [more]

"Jubilant residents yanked the bodies of four American contractors working for the US-led coalition out of their burning cars yesterday, dragged the charred corpses through the streets, and hung two of them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River." [more]

"After many American threats to arrest Muqtada in the past, the American occupying forces accused al-Hawza of fomenting violence against them and closed its offices for 60 days, padlocking and chaining the doors, handing the editor a letter signed by US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer, explaining that the newspaper had violated a ban on fomenting violence." [more]

"To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up." [more]

"The Government believes it may have found a way to damage Mark Latham and it's going to try to step it up again in the debate this afternoon. But both independent Meg Lees and Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett believe that the Government's planned Iraq debate is nothing more than a political exercise." [more]

"It still remains unclear what charges Saddam will face and where the trial will take place, but Verges is already preparing the groundwork. He says he plans to highlight America's role in the nerve gas attacks in Kurdish villages in northern Iraq in the 1980s during the trial, emphasizing the fact that the U.S. sold the deadly chemicals to Iraq during President Ronald Reagan's term." [more]

"Proliferation is merely globalization of weapons of mass destruction. ... Proliferation, however, is not, as the President seemed to think, just a rogue state or two seeking weapons of mass destruction; it is the entire half-century-long process of globalization that stretches from Klaus Fuchs's espionage to Tahir's nuclear arms bazaar and beyond. The war was a failure in its own terms because weapons of mass destruction were absent in Iraq; the war policy failed because they were present and spreading in Pakistan." [more]

"Although the complete Land Warrior System -- a modular, integrated fighting system that includes everything an infantry soldier wears or carries on the battlefield -- is not due to be fielded until 2007, troops in the field already benefit from several of its components." [more]

"After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 'Nope,' Bush said. 'No weapons over there.' More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: 'Maybe under here.' Laughter again." [more]

"Mr Latham said the attacks were 'ludicrous' and he would not back down. He repeated that the 850 troops in and around Iraq would be withdrawn when power was handed to an Iraqi administration - scheduled for June 30 - even if it requested they remain." [more]

"Before last week's Mosul attack, some of the new Christian arrivals volunteered that they were handing out Christian tracts and seeking converts. Now they are quick to claim themselves to be non-proselytising humanitarian workers or evangelists who confine their activities to the Christian community." [more]

"Team chief Col. Virgil Patterson said one in four soldiers surveyed reported moderate or severe emotional, alcohol or family problems. More than half reported low or very low morale and almost three-quarters reported low or very low unit morale." [more]

"Nor is it just in Iraq that American troops are now facing Fourth Generation war. They have their hands full of it in Afghanistan, in Pakistan (by proxy), in Haiti, and in Kosovo. So long as America continues on the strategic offensive, intervening all over the world, the list will grow. In each case, the root problem will be the same: the disintegration of the local state. And in each case, the attempt to recreate a state by sending in American armed forces will fail." [more]

"Military lawyers refuse to name the soldiers, reportedly from the 800 Military Police Brigade, who were charged, or to release their charge sheets or describe the nature of the alleged abuse. In response to a question, they said none of the prisoners was given medical treatment, and would not say if any of the mistreated prisoners were women." [more]

"In his weekly radio address to the nation today, President George W. Bush told the American people that the war on terror isn't a figure of speech, 'it's the inescapable calling of our generation.'" [more]

"'That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride,' Kwasniewski said." [more]

Mr. Zapatero offered scathing criticism of the American-led war in Iraq, which his party, like 90 percent of the Spanish people, opposed. He stated: "The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a great disaster. It hasn't generated anything but more violence and hate. What simply cannot be is that after it became so clear how badly it was handled there be no consequences." [more]

"... it was a tad misleading to demand Hussein's ouster on grounds that he 'harbors a deadly terrorist network' -- when it was not Hussein, but a Taliban-like crowd of Islamic radicals in the U.S. Air Force-protected north, doing the harboring." [more]

"Kimmitt reported the past week has seen an average of 21 daily engagements against coalition military forces, four attacks daily against Iraqi security forces, and just over three attacks daily against Iraqi civilian targets. / Over past 24 hours, Kimmitt continued, coalition forces in Iraq conducted 1,448 patrols, 15 offensive operations and seven raids. They captured 52 anti- coalition suspects and released seven detainees." [more]

"Susan Lindauer, 40, was arrested at her $250,000 suburban Washington condominium and appeared in federal court in Baltimore on suspicion of being involved as early as 1999 with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service..." [more]

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the Executive Office of the President. [more]

"Mr Kay, who was formerly a UN weapons inspector, called for the president to go further. 'It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people. He should say we were mistaken and I am determined to find out why,' he said." [more]

"...I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia." [more]

"I was 100 metres away from the first explosion, but you didn't have to be that close. Millions of Shia saw that first terrifying explosion, which sent a great burst of yellow fire bellowing over the roofs of Karbala; cameras were already filming the ceremonies. You could watch it all on the television news, just like on 11 September." [more]

"The expansion of the geographical boundaries of the region dilutes the importance of the Palestinian problem and demotes it from its central position on the political stage of the Middle East to a marginal position as just one of several "hot" issues plaguing a much wider region. Moreover, given Washington's fixation on terrorism, it could well use the new rationale to classify the Palestinian struggle for nationhood as just one more example of the terrorism that is widely propagated throughout the greater Middle East." [more]

"Tens of thousands are on the move now as the Pentagon carries out the largest rotation of forces in its history, relieving battle-weary soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait with fresh forces. By late March, 130,000 troops will be leaving Iraq and 105,000, including some of the 319th, will arrive. As many as 50% of these will be reservists or National Guard." [more]

"The secretary is not particularly moved by accusations that the intervention in Iraq is 'illegal.' 'I am not a lawyer; I dropped out of law school,' he jokes." [more]

"In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction—the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it." [more]

"The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday." [more]

"With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon." [more]

"It now appears that appeasing Bin Laden was a major part of the neo-con sales pitch to the White House. Congressman Christopher Shays... made a startling revelation about the war party’s marketing strategy. In an attempt to deflect a question over the non-existent WMDs, he gave away part of the neo-con arguments presented to key decision makers. 'We knew we needed to get out of Saudi Arabia, that was one of the contentions of Osama bin Laden. We knew we needed to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. We could not do that as long as Saddam Hussein existed.'" [more]

"Ms. Gun's arrest last March and her assertion that she had acted out of conscience to expose what she regarded as an attempt by the United States to undermine the debate at the United Nations, has attracted broad attention." [more]

"The Iowa National Guard says it will punish 21 soldiers who failed drug tests before being sent overseas. / The...soldiers will be discharged dishonorably. The troops were not discharged or put through rehab at the time of the drug tests. / Guard officials say that's because deployment schedules didn't allow for it." [more]

"...US administrator Paul Bremer spent much of the summer and fall mulling 'plans that could take years,' only to abruptly change his position in late 2003 following a 'hasty' return to Washington for consultations. Confronted with mounting violence in Iraq, and an increasingly confident Democratic Party at home, the Bush team tailored the Iraqi power transition to its own political needs, al Khafaji said." [more]

"An official US statement declaring Ansar a terrorist group claimed that Zarqawi was a 'senior al-Qaeda operative', but later he was only 'suspected' of being some kind of affiliate. Until two weeks ago, he was considered the leader of Ansar al-Islam. Now he is thought to head a Jordanian extremist group called al-Tawhid, and only linked to al-Qaeda and other groups." [more]

"A bold daylight attack on a police station here Saturday has underscored a growing concern: Can Iraq's fledgling security forces maintain order after the planned June 30 US transfer of power to Iraqi authorities?" [more]

"He said that the US and UK governments 'must have known' that the evidence presented by their intelligence services about places in Iraq where there might be WMD 'was erroneous', because 'we made it known to them'." [more]

"For the wounded veterans of the Iraq war, the battles now are with sleeping and waking, and the close-in fighting is with intimates and one's self." [more]

"Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current." [more]

"Iraqi defectors gave misleading information to bolster the case for war, U.S. officials have found." [more]

"Guerrillas shouting 'God is great' launched a bold daylight assault on an Iraqi police station and security compound west of Baghdad on Saturday, freeing prisoners and sparking a gunbattle that killed 21 people and wounded 33, police and hospital officials said." [more]

"To get public attention off of Kay's report (and resignation), Bush has used his political skills to try to silence his former weapons inspector, and to preempt Kay's knowledge and suggestions by making it yesterday's news." [more]

"Terror is both a real phenomenon and a fraud ... The United States has made a long series of blunders in the Middle East guaranteed to offend and intimidate Muslims, especially fundamentalists, the people from whom an organization like al Qaeda draws support. These blunders must be seen in the context of an almost irrational support for Israel's bloodiest behavior." [more]

"The organizer of the attack is thought to be an Islamic fanatic Sunni organization, a branch of Ansar al-Islam, which works from outside. One of al-Islam's sources of financing are people of al-Qa'ida from Saudi Arabia." [more]

"The US Administration is the most prominent benefactor from any internal discord that could arise in Iraq because it would find excuses to weaken and divide the country, preoccupy its people with infighting, and move away from the real reason for all Iraq's current problems; namely, US occupation." [more]

"Iraq demonstrated that waging war against a nation that has not attacked another and ousting its leader — even a dictator — smacks of arrogance and sours allies whose help is needed in fighting other enemies and financing postwar reconstruction." [more]

"Unlike the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which was established by a congressional resolution, the executive order creating the intelligence commission does not mention subpoena power or the authority to take testimony under oath or even hold public hearings." [more]

"The dispatch of soldiers to Iraq has jarred the national psyche. No Japanese soldier has fallen — or killed an enemy — since the surrender to the United States in 1945." [more]

"After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about propaganda. He notes that 'the "investigation" is slated to go past the election. Members will be picked by the president, and the scope is unconscionably wider than is necessary.' McGovern contends that 'the key question for 2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the media can be loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take away the president's driver's license and put an end to the reckless endangerment.'" [more]

A Vietnam veteran columnist reflects on the treatment of POWs. [more]

"Our assessment of the unsanctioned by the UN Security Council military operation against Iraq as a big political mistake remains in force it is necessary to think together about ways out of this situation and methods to solve the Iraq problem in line with the norms of international law, and about ways to ensure a better life for the Iraqi people." [more]

"The ceremony marked the culmination of several weeks of transition operations and regional handovers in Tall Afar, Qayyara and Mosul, as many units under the operational control of Task Force Olympia worked in conjunction with 101st Airborne Division soldiers to ensure a seamless transition of authority." [more]

"This period between regimes is precisely when the most devastating betrayals have taken place ... Again and again, newly liberated people arrive at the polls only to discover that there is precious little left to vote for. But in Iraq, it's not too late to block that process. The key is to confine any transitional council's mandate to matters directly related to elections: the census, security, protections for women and minorities." [more]

"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Pentagon has no constitutional obligation to provide the media access to U.S. troops during combat." [more]

Blair and Bush both continue to suffer from the near-total lack of evidence of WMD in Iraq. [more]

"A former Marine guard testified yesterday that it was common practice in Iraq to kick and punch prisoners who didn't cooperate — and even some who did." [more]

"Coalition authorities have welcomed the Iraqi Central Bank's decision to liberalise interest rates and allow foreign banks back into the country." [more]

"The attacks came just as Kurdish leaders were embroiled in negotiations over how much independence the Kurdish region would be allowed and how the two leading Kurdish parties, whose offices were bombed during holiday receptions, would share power. The deaths of important officials could change the balance of political viewpoints in each party." [more]

"Last night the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, said that Washington would not want to see Blair concede now to pressure for a WMD inquiry and thereby 'jack-up the pressure on the White House to follow', Cook added that if the White House announced its own inquiry terms first 'then Britain would indeed find it difficult to resist launching a parallel inquiry.' " [more]

"Despite the sensitive climate surrounding the publication of Lord Hutton's report, the BBC's marketing department has decided to focus on the BBC website's in-depth coverage of the inquiry as part of a drive to attract new users." [more]

"The former leader of the U.S. hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said Sunday that intelligence agencies owe the president and the public an explanation for the failure to find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons after the U.S.-led war ... [He] also said that the looting and rioting that followed the short war could have destroyed evidence that would have shed light on whether Iraq possessed such weapons." [more]

"At least 37 female service members have sought sexual-trauma counseling and other assistance from civilian rape crisis organizations after returning from war duty in Iraq, Kuwait and other overseas stations." [more]

"Chief among the discoveries that led him to see Vietnam as a mistake, McNamara said, was his realization that the United States could not, by itself, properly analyze the actions and ground-level conditions necessary to achieve the complex and ambiguous goals of a war — reversing the influence of communism in Asia, in Vietnam's case, or bringing democracy to the Arab world, in Iraq's." [more]

"This is not the first American return to the United Nations, but it is the most spectacular ... Nine months after the fall of Baghdad, the American government faces a Gordian knot of problems." [more]

One Japanese paper writes "that Iraq differs greatly from places such as East Timor, where Japanese troops are currently carrying out peacekeeping duties under the auspices of the UN." [more]

"American soldiers on Monday night killed an Iraqi man and a boy and wounded four others in a car that was driving behind their convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby, said witnesses, a police official and relatives of the family in the car." [more]

"Can the lessons of history help defeat the insurgency in Iraq? Dodging bullets, taking prisoners and trying to win hearts and minds." [more]

"Tariffs were suspended, a new banking code was adopted, a 15 percent cap was placed on all future taxes, and foreign investors can now own Iraqi companies fully with no requirements for reinvesting profits back into the country." [more]

"The Carnegie study, based on five months of interviews and research that compared statements by US officials with declassified documents, said that the Bush administration ignored experts who could have offered more accurate information and swept aside the assessments of the State and Energy departments, whose different findings were not made public until July, months after the invasion." [more]

"'Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here,' said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's 4th Infantry Division as he manned the checkpoint with Iraqi police outside this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad." [more]

"Investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones." [more]

The Bush Administration has reluctantly granted autonomy to the Kurdish region within the transitional Iraq government. Saddam's influence in Kurdish Iraq was limited in the 1990s — the Kurds were able to set up a functioning government that helped administer what sparse aid made it through the UN sanctions. Kurdish autonomy will also greatly trouble their northern neighbor because of the conflict that the Turkish government had with Kurdish separatists in the 1990s. [more]

"You must know that what prevents you from joining jihad is nothing but your soul and Satan. If you hope to live a long life and fear death, then you must know that death is inevitable. You should not fear the path that you must tread." [more]

"The presence of a powerful secret police, loyal to the Americans, will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set." [more]

"Part of a secret $3 billion in new funds ... will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." [more]

"Millions of women have found themselves living under de facto house arrest since the coalition forces claimed Baghdad in April." [more]

"Occupation ends on 1 July with the installation of the transition government. After that, Iraq will be a sovereign state -- and then no country in the world has the right to impose conditions on us. It will be up to us to cooperate with France, Germany and Russia." [more]

"The US administration wishes to frighten the US people in order to justify its flouting of UN resolutions, its violation of human rights in Iraq, and its holding of prisoners at the Guantanamo Base." [more]

"The number of U.S. service members killed and wounded in Iraq has more than doubled in the past four months compared with the four months preceding them, according to Pentagon statistics." [more]

"Suicide attackers carried out four coordinated car bombings Saturday outside the bases of U.S.-led forces in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing six soldiers from Bulgaria and Thailand as well as seven Iraqis, according to military officials." [more]

"The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated." [more]

"The war on terrorism is apocalyptic exactly because it is militarized and yet amorphous, without limits of time or place, and has no clear end. It therefore enters the realm of the infinite. Implied in its approach is that every last terrorist everywhere on the earth is to be hunted down until there are no more terrorists anywhere to threaten us, and in that way the world will be rid of evil." [more]

"The arrest of Saddam has left the Arab world more divided than ever, as Yasir Suleiman explains" [more]

A look at the Iraqis who hated Saddam, but who hate the Americans more. [more]

"United States forces killed three attackers and thousands of soldiers swooped on a town in a major crackdown on Wednesday as violence and instability gripped Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein's capture." [more]

"Guantánamo's inmates are among the least significant of any detainees captured since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to several American counterterrorism experts. The C.I.A. has not sent any of the highest-ranking Qaeda leaders it has captured to the base, officials said." [more]

"U.S. officials said Kay, who could leave as early as January or February, was frustrated in part by the lack of progress and because some of his staff have been diverted from the weapons search to helping combat Iraqi insurgents." [more]

"There's strong evidence that Saddam Hussein's arrest is irrelevant, and Osama bin Laden is using Iraq as a smoke screen." [more]

"The Iraqi Foreign Minister laid out the details Tuesday for a resumption of sovereignty that calls for nationwide elections by the end of 2005, but he warned that movement toward democracy depends on the establishment of a stable and secure country." [more]

"Eight months after a giant statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled to the ground in Baghdad in a gesture of celebration, the US finally has Mr. Hussein for real. It was probably the most intensive manhunt in history, with thousands of troops, secret units, and intensive pressure from Washington." [more]

"Saddam Hussein's capture may not end attacks by insurgents." [more]

"Rumsfeld [said] that Saddam's classification may change and he may lose POW status if it appears he had a role in the postwar insurgency in Iraq that has killed more than 200 Americans." [more]

"Saddam's capture is a 'model opportunity' for international justice, says the head of Amnesty International USA, but it doesn't justify Bush's civil liberties crackdown." [more]

"Nelson said the senators were told [by the White House] Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones." [more]

"Any trial of Hussein would be a hugely complicated undertaking, especially for an Iraqi justice system that barely exists eight months after U.S. forces captured Baghdad. Human rights organizations raised questions today about the credibility of a still-unformed Iraqi tribunal that would operate with U.S. backing." [more]

"The assaults came a few hours after news that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured in Iraq, news welcomed by many Kuwaitis whose country was invaded by Saddam's forces in 1990." [more]

"Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead." [more]

" 'While his crimes could merit a court martial, mitigating factors involved were considered including the stressful environment our leaders and soldiers face daily and Lt Col West's record as an officer and commander,' the division [court] said in a statement." [more]

"Three hundred of the new Iraqi army’s 700-strong 1st Battalion were discharged after they refused to obey orders following a row over pay and 'terms and conditions.' " [more]

"A Pentagon investigation has found evidence that a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Company overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for fuel delivered to Iraq under huge no-bid reconstruction contracts, senior military officials said Thursday." [more]

"As soon as [the governor] resigned, the local representative of the U.S. occupation authority appointed a former Iraqi air force officer as acting governor. To the protesters, that was unacceptable. The new governor, they insisted, should be chosen not by an American but by Iraqis — through an election." [more]

"Scores of Iraqi civilians were killed or injured needlessly, because Britain failed in its duty as an occupying power, a human rights group claims. " [more]

"These are tough times for the architects of the 'Bush doctrine' of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes. Instead, the venture has turned sour — and many insiders see Mr. Baker's mission as part of an effort by veterans of the first Bush administration to extricate George W. Bush from the hard-liners' clutches. If the mission collapses amid acrimony over contracts, that's a good thing from the hard-liners' point of view. [more]

"The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government." [more]

"The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show." [more]

"While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground." [more]

"Critics said the policy could discourage countries from helping to rebuild Iraq and complicate American efforts to restructure Iraq's estimated $125 billion debt, much of it owed to France, Germany, Russia and other nations whose companies are excluded under the Pentagon directive." [more]

"The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step 'is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.'" [more]

"During the past two months, more than 100 people have been killed in car bombings and other explosions targeting U.S. and allied forces, foreign diplomats and aid workers, and Iraqi security forces cooperating with the occupation authorities." [more]

" 'You have to understand the Arab mind,' Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. 'The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.' " [more]

"Four Army divisions now in Iraq are to return next year and will need about six months to rest, retrain and repair equipment. With three divisions set to rotate into Iraq and another into Afghanistan as replacements, about 80 percent of the Army's fighting strength will be either on the mend or on duty fighting terror and stabilizing the two countries." [more]

"The administration's justification for war was not merely flawed or imperfect—it was wrong in almost every detail, and completely wrong at the heart. There was no imminent danger—indeed there was no distant danger. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction to give to al-Qaeda or anyone else." [more]

The vast majority of Americans do not believe the war with Iraq has made them any safer, a new poll revealed. The same majority feel the UN should be allowed to take a more prominent role. [more]

A trip to Iraq, organized by peace and justice organization Global Exchange, will give the parents of troops stationed in Iraq a first-hand look at military activities and the civilian population there. For some of the parents, it is a chance to become more vocal about their opposition to the war. [more]

" 'We signed up to fight our nation's enemies and we are fully prepared to do that,' [the soldier] said. 'But if they're going to usurp the laws of this country at the expense of our most precious asset, our soldiers, then I will not stand for that, not for a minute.' " [more]

"Ground Rule 9 for the media covering President Bush's presidential visit Monday sounded more like an edict from Beijing or a banana republic: 'Write positive stories about Ft. Carson and the U.S. Army.' " [more]

"The decision to demolish houses suspected of sheltering insurgents resembles a tactic long in use by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to punish the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Like the Israelis, troops with the 4th Infantry have also flattened wide swaths on roadsides to inhibit the laying of bombs." [more]

"This choke hold corpocracy are the environmental terrorists that have done huge damage and have, if you care to blow away the smoke and look at the true history of how 9/11 and Istanbul happened, are the ones who funded these events in the first place; driven by the 'animal instincts' of criminal-capitalism that is their ethos." [more]

"US Major-General Tommy Crawford told the conference he strongly opposed the policy that blocked Australian officers from getting intelligence on Iraq, even when some of it originated from Australian intelligence sources." [more]

"Another terrible terrorist atrocity, another steely vow to crush the terrorists. How long can this go on? George Bush and Tony Blair were united yesterday in their determination 'to defeat this evil'. The prime minister was adamant that 'there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can and in defeating it utterly'. The president claimed, again, that the struggle against al-Qaida and its allies is being won. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The blood and rubble in the streets of Istanbul, for the second time in a week, tells a different story." [more]

" 'We will finish the job we have begun,' Bush said during a state visit to Britain. 'We could have less troops in Iraq. We could have the same number of troops in Iraq. We could have more troops in Iraq — [whatever is] necessary to secure Iraq.' " [more]

"A new U.S. office established in Baghdad to supervise and oversee contracts has set an aggressive timetable, awarding up to $18.7 billion in 25 contracts over the next 10 weeks to rebuild Iraq." [more]

"In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: 'I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.' " [more]

"About 70 allied soldiers have died in November, already making it the deadliest month since April, when 73 troops died. President Bush declared major combat over May 1." [more]

"The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert." [more]

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said his country will not be deterred by a bomb in Iraq which claimed the lives of 18 Italians. [more]

"Some council members, who were appointed by the coalition in July, are pressing for full sovereign powers as a provisional government, with the United States handing over responsibility for security to an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of private militias." [more]

"These growing attacks against American forces have two clear goals: inflict casualties and force a reaction that alienates the local population. Both are being achieved, as the quick-response raids by coalition troops to seize those behind the attacks fuel Iraqi alienation." [more]

"Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service ... offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections." [more]

"I wish administration officials were lying, because I would prefer hypocrisy to delusion — at least hypocritical officials make decisions with accurate information." [more]

"The Iraq reconstruction aid is down from the $20.3 billion Bush had requested, but is still the biggest one-shot foreign aid outlay Congress has ever approved — and more money than Congress is providing this year for all other countries combined." [more]

"For the second consecutive day, Baghdad's Green Zone, a secure area that houses the headquarters of the US-led coalition, was the target of a bomb attack." [more]

"Some pundits and politicians, even those who may have been skeptical about the war to begin with, now argue that we must 'finish the job,' even if it means increasing our commitment of troops or ruling Iraq indefinitely. This is, however, exactly the kind of stubborn and mushy thinking that led us into the hell of the Vietnam War and the deaths of 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese and Cambodians." [more]

"What has emerged here in the triangle that reaches from Baghdad's northern doorstep to Tikrit, Hussein's hometown, is a war of attrition. The Americans detain and kill anti-coalition fighters in the belief the insurgents' shell will eventually crack. The fighters retaliate with roadside explosions and mortar attacks on the assumption the Americans at some point will lose heart and go home." [more]

"On Monday, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all cited the number of total U.S. deaths in Iraq — 378 or 379 as of Monday, in addition to the killed-in-action number." [more]

"In tactical terms, yesterday's action was troubling but unlikely to result in major changes in how the U.S. military operates on the ground and in the skies over Iraq. But the latest round of attacks in Iraq, and especially yesterday's deaths — which amounted to the biggest single day of losses since last spring's conventional war — may prove more significant in strategic terms." [more]

"It is becoming painfully clear that the American plan (if it can even be dignified with the name) for dealing with postwar Iraq was flawed in its conception and ineptly carried out. At the very least, the bulk of the evidence suggests that what was probably bound to be a difficult aftermath to the war was made far more difficult by blinkered vision and overoptimistic assumptions on the part of the war's greatest partisans within the Bush administration." [more]

"Signs of a movement to Iraq have also been detected in Europe. Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top investigative judge on terrorism, said dozens of poor and middle-class Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer. He said some of them appeared to have been inspired by exhortations of Qaeda leaders, even if they were not trained by Al Qaeda." [more]

"Many of the same demonstrators gathered here months ago to urge the White House not to go to war in Iraq. The demonstrators reassembled here in the shadow of the Washington Monument because they said they wanted to let the president know that they remained deeply opposed to the American military's continued presence in Iraq." [more]

"Despite prewar claims, it is now clear Iraq had no active program to build a nuclear weapon." [more]

"At the tender age of six months, the war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam. But from the way the administration tries to manage the news against all reality, even that irrevocable reality encased in flag-draped coffins, you can only wonder if it might yet persuade the audience at home that we're mired in another Tet after all." [more]

"The central point of contention is whether the United States should quit Iraq completely and at all costs or hand off the occupation to some sort of international/United Nations security force, with or without US participation. In light of these splits, what is most impressive is that the movement has managed to maintain as much tactical, strategic and ideological coherence as it has." [more]

"The demonstration reflects the mood of many Americans, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the cost of the occupation and the rising number of casualties." [more]

"To chants of 'Impeach Bush,' thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in the nation's capital Saturday and delivered a scathing critique of President Bush and his Iraq policy." [more]

"Peace activists, many carrying placards, said increasing concerns about casualties in Iraq have spurred the U.S. anti-war movement back into action after months of relative quiet." [more]

Forty-one Australian Labour Party federal parliamentarians have written an open letter to George Bush, explaining why so many Australians opposed the war on Iraq. [more]

"The [governing] council as a whole rejected the plan, insisting that Iraq's neighbors should not play a military role in the country. But Kurdish leaders went further, arguing that Turkey has a different agenda and would encourage other Iraqi neighbors to enter the fray." [more]

"The shootout in Karbala was the latest in a string of incidents involving [local cleric] Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Sadr had helped lead the physical expulsion of the US-appointed district council for Sadr City from its building. He and a number of other leaders in the district are seeking to replace the council with representatives they see as more legitimate." [more]

"The inability of the authorities to restore security has been reaffirmed again and again over recent months. For Iraqis, the first signs of difficulty were present immediately upon the fall of the last government. The decision of American forces to protect the Ministry of Oil while looters were allowed to ransack public institutions is an enduring source of anger." [more]

"Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq has been shaken by 84 major attacks, and countless smaller incidents and acts of sabotage, that have transformed America's promise of rapid reconstruction into an increasingly bloody guerrilla war." [more]

" 'If they can do that to the CIA and FBI, imagine what they can do to people like us,' one witness, who was too scared to give his name, said. 'This means the Americans are very weak.' " [more]

"Alarmed by the number of suicides among soldiers in Iraq, the Army has asked a team of doctors to determine whether the stress of combat and long deployments is contributing to the deaths. A psychiatrist at the Army's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences ... is helping to investigate the suicides in Iraq. 'Is there something different going on in Iraq that we really need to pay attention to?' " [more]

A series of letters to hometown newspapers, purportedly written by US soldiers in Iraq, contain identical language. The letters praise the US effort to rebuild the war-torn Mideast nation. [more]

"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops." [more]

"A powerful Shia Muslim movement warned US troops on Friday not to enter Baghdad's largest Shia neighbourhood after a gun battle there on Thursday night killed two US soldiers and two Iraqis." [more]

"Portable missiles were fired at incoming planes [in Iraq] several times in recent weeks, one senior official said. Most of those incidents have not been reported to the public." [more]

"Foley said he was 'fully confident' Iraq could become 'a thriving capitalist economy.' He said he believed estimates that placed Iraqi unemployment at 50 to 60 percent were too high." [more]

" 'Almost two years after the fall of the Taliban and nearly six months after the fall of Baghdad, the White House is finally organizing itself to deal with the realities of postwar Afghanistan and Iraq," said Senator John Edwards. '[R]earranging flow charts is no substitute for leadership.' " [more]

"Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded privately that Iraq did not have the quickly deployable weapons of mass destruction that the British government cited as justification for war, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook asserted today." [more]

"I am haunted by the fear that Tony still sees [Iraq] as an issue of manipulating press and public opinion, and has not grasped that on the substance of the issue the public and he are so far apart that he cannot win this one ... I never doubted that No 10 believed in the threads of intelligence which were woven into the dossier. But that does not alter the awkward fact that the intelligence was wrong and ministers who had applied a sceptical mind could have seen that it was too thin to be a reliable basis for war." [more]

"The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent. Despite those findings ... Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that 'we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.' " [more]

"Americans are a mystery to many Iraqis, and Baghdad was awash in stories that reflected Iraqi ambivalence toward their new overlords. In Mansour, almost everyone thought the Americans had dropped a tactical nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant in the effort to get Hussein." [more]

"In a rare act of defiance, Kofi Annan dispatched a senior official to brief reporters on his alternative proposal, which is almost identical to that favoured by Germany and France. Mr Annan’s rejection of the US-British approach has stopped the coalition partners’ draft UN resolution dead in its tracks." [more]

"Kay's inability to find such weapons in three months of searching will make it even harder for the administration to continue to insist that Saddam was an imminent threat — the core argument the White House had made last winter for going to war." [more]

"[The US] team had found only limited evidence of any chemical weapons effort, [Kay] said, and there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way." [more]

"I believe that any visitor to Iraq now will himself discover that all of the Iraqi population, with all of its various nationalities, religions, and sects, is looking forward to the day when they will be rid of the occupation. This has significance." [more]

"Beyond fatalities, an average of eight American soldiers a day are wounded." [more]

"Bush did not mention [in his speech] that Saddam Hussein's ouster, rather than dealing a blow to Al Qaeda, was followed by a rise in terrorism in Iraq and an influx of jihadists primed to strike at the United States, or that the war may have succeeded in uniting Baathist secularists and Islamic fundamentalists, something even Saddam couldn't do." [more]

"An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value." [more]

"Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, 'circumstantial' and 'fragmentary' information with 'too many uncertainties' to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda." [more]

"After telling the world that most Iraqis are delighted with their 'liberation' and forthcoming 'democracy', the authorities are obviously aware that many Iraqis don't feel that way at all." [more]

"Killings appear to single out anyone from senior [Ba'ath] party officials to night guards and they have sown fear among party members, forcing some to go into hiding. Iraqi police, overwhelmed by the violence that has engulfed the country in the past few months, do not have the ability to sort out the various possible motives for the killings." [more]

"Often the children are there beside the cheap wooden coffins, screaming and crying and numb with loss. The families weep and they say that no one cares about them and, after expressing our sorrow to them over and over again, I come to the conclusion they are right. No one cares." [more]

"This spring, the 62-year-old retired schoolteacher decided to travel to Iraq as a human shield. To many she is a humanitarian, but in the eyes of the US Government she is a criminal." [more]

"The night watchman said the soldiers had arrived in military vehicles but were casually dressed and were drinking beer. At the tiger's cage, now empty, pools of blood showed that the soldier passed through a first cage intended only for keepers and stood next to the inner cage's narrow bars." [more]

" 'I once believed that I served for a cause: "To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Now I no longer believe that,' Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote ... 'I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.' " [more]

"An increasing number of journalists in Baghdad now suspect that US proconsul Paul Bremmer and his hundreds of assistants ensconced in the heavily guarded former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in the capital, have simply lost touch with reality." [more]

"There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark, US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day." [more]

"I'm just watching two Apache helicopters as I speak to you now just flying over the buildings in front of me, on 'antiterrorist patrol', as it's called. There is a real guerilla war underway here, and when you are on the ground you realize it's moving out of control. Washington is still trying to present this as a success story and it's not, anymore than Afghanistan." [more]

"A spokesman in Iraq did not specify how many were being held but U.S. defense officials in Washington said six people claiming American nationality and two who said they were British were in detention at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad." [more]

"Military officials [are] deeply worried about an exodus from the state-based National Guards and the reserves of the nation's armed forces. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers have been mobilized at a level thought to be the highest since World War II." [more]

"Congressional Republicans deny the Democratic charge that the deficit was deliberately created to shrink government, but nonetheless acknowledge that it will be a useful tool to achieve that goal." [more]

"By trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the wave of terrorist attacks against American interests from New York and Washington to Yemen. And the policy advanced by the speech is a major step toward creating a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground." [more]

"The United States and other leading nations on the Security Council held intensive discussions over the future governance of Iraq today but failed to break the impasse over France's insistence that Iraq's transition to self-rule be overseen by the United Nations rather than the American occupation." [more]

"Witnesses said a joint patrol of local police and a U.S.-trained security force were chasing thieves shortly after midnight on Friday when U.S. soldiers opened fire on them." [more]

"Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, sat down at the league's circular table behind little Iraqi flag, becoming Iraq's first envoy to the league since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April." [more]

"More than four months after US President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said facts presented by Iraq in the 12,000-page document may have been accurate." [more]

"The order comes after months of concern inside and outside the Army that an over-reliance on Guard and Reserve forces by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism could adversely affect retention and recruiting. Some officials have expressed concern that this could break the Guard and Reserve system, which augments the active-duty force with critical engineering, military police, civil affairs and psychological operations specialists." [more]

"The 288 American soldiers and countless Iraqis who have since died in a pointless, bloody war will not be mentioned, nor will the administration's own responsibility in their deaths. Of all the lies this administration has told its people, one false promise resonated most deeply with frightened Americans — the promise that a war with Iraq would make us safer." [more]

"Senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to [Iraq's] infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country. The disclosures ... mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq." [more]

"The White House acknowledged Monday that it substantially underestimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq, and that even the additional $87 billion it is seeking from a wary Congress will fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction." [more]

"Lawmakers of both parties warned before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that stabilizing post-war Iraq could be far more expensive than waging war. For months, the Bush administration was reluctant to discuss the financial costs of the commitment, much as the Johnson administration seldom directly addressed the budget impact of Vietnam." [more]

"Washington’s Plan A clearly isn’t working. The fighting is far from over in Iraq. But there’s no walking away. The administration needs to have a clear, long-term commitment, the backing of the United Nations and more than a little help from its friends." [more]

"A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies." [more]

"Saddam Husayn is not the leader of the minority or a group, with whom he is affiliated or who are affiliated with him. He is the leader of all the great Iraqi people -- Arabs and Kurds; Shiites and Sunnis; Muslims and non-Muslims. Saddam Husayn does not attribute this saying to himself. This is what was decided by the great Iraqi people themselves in free, public elections." [more]

"The death of [Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim], the most influential Iraqi cleric openly allied with the U.S.-led occupation, dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to build a representative postwar government ... [it] left a panorama of misery and devastation unparalleled since the fall of Hussein's government on April 9. The brick facades of shops were sheared away. Cars were flipped and hurled onto the sidewalk. Burned, mangled and dismembered bodies littered the street, trampled as others ran in confusion and panic for safety. " [more]

"Shi'a fury will be directed at the Sunnis to the north. It will also be directed toward United States as the occupying force who both did nothing to prevent this tragedy, and further continued the British doctrine of Sunni favoritism by insisting that the Shi'a religious leaders would never be allowed to come to power. [T]he forces of retribution are about to be unleashed in a manner hitherto unseen in the region." [more]

"Nearly 300 American personnel and dozens of British soldiers, plus U.N. officials and untold numbers of Iraqis, [may] have died due to incredibly bad or corrupted intelligence." [more]

"Although senior CIA officials insist that defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March, other intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed. The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq." [more]

"The withdrawal came as the US death toll from the postwar occupation rose above the number killed in the invasion itself." [more]

"The extraordinary move to recruit agents of former president Saddam Hussein's security services underscores a growing recognition among U.S. officials that American military forces — already stretched thin — cannot alone prevent attacks like the devastating truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters this past week." [more]

"The United States figures it can get plenty out of the newly captured Chemical Ali. But how? And are these 'interrogation' techniques being readied for American citizens?" [more]

"The U.S. occupation is too weak to restore order or maintain basic services, yet oppressive enough to kill, injure, and inflame Iraqi civilians. In the months since the war Baghdad has become 'another Beirut,' a blow to Iraqi pride for which Iraqis blame the United States. And the situation is likely to get worse." [more]

"Only one thing ever said by the White House is true, which is that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. That he was. And so now, eight lies later, the administration falls back on this rhetoric, which is obviously the Republican National Committee's No. 1 talking point: Would you rather ... that Saddam Hussein still be in power butchering his people? This is the question of a demagogue, a shill or an idiot." [more]

"America has created ... precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs." [more]

"The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq. Before the Iraq war, the Bush team inflated the threats to America; since the war, the Bush team has deflated the threats to America." [more]

"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are to pull their staff out of Iraq after the devastating bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Some countries that had been considering sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq might heighten their reluctance after the bomb blast." [more]

"Yesterday's attack, the worst in U.N. history, was another sign that surly, chaotic postwar Iraq is becoming a magnet for terrorists. That is yet another consequence of the Iraq war that the Bush administration failed to anticipate, like the uncontrolled postwar looting, the delays in restoring water and electricity, the ambushes of American soldiers and the sabotage of infrastructure." [more]

"Up to 50 people were wounded in the blast, and body parts were scattered around the rubble, a witness said. The witness added that he had seen bodies being dragged out of the rubble, and American soldiers sent to the scene pulling sheets over the faces of others lying on the ground." [more]

"The description of active combat in Iraq was one of several statements Bush made in the interview that differed with earlier administration positions." [more]

"Saudis who have gone to Iraq have established links with sympathetic Iraqis in the northern area between Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where they have hidden in safe-houses." [more]

"[The cameraman] was the 17th news organization employee to be killed since the war began. The videotape in [his] camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and [he] fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a U.S. helicopter. 'There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident,' [a witness] said." [more]

"A pipeline supplying much of Baghdad's water was blown up this weekend, a huge new fire was set off along an oil pipeline, and a mortar attack on a prison left 6 Iraqis dead and 59 wounded." [more]

"The move could disappoint those who viewed the ouster of Saddam Hussein as an opportunity to set Iraqi oil policy on a pro-American course, open the nation's oil sector to Western companies and reduce the influence of OPEC on world oil production and prices." [more]

"The cameraman was the second Reuters journalist to be killed in Iraq since the invasion began on March 20. His colleague died on April 8 when an American tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, from which Mr. Protsyuk was filming the United States advance into the city center." [more]

" 'America did not come here to liberate Iraq, as some misguided people think,' said Sheikh Abdul Hadi al Daraji. 'The United States does not seek the goodwill of Muslims and Arab people. They did not come here for the interests of Iraqi people, but for their own designs.' " [more]

"Video footage ... showed a Black Hawk helicopter hovering a few feet from the top of [a] tower and apparently trying to tear down [an Islamic] banner. Later, US Humvees drove by and the crowd threw stones at them. Heavy gunfire could be heard and demonstrators were seen diving to the ground." [more]

"Presidential contenders and congressional Democrats criticized the Pentagon on Thursday for opposing legislation that would extend an increase in combat pay for troops in Iraq and other war zones." [more]

"If the Bush administration had been wrong only about the Niger purchase, it would have indicated carelessness. But the references to nuclear weapons, taken as a whole, indicate dissatisfaction with the truth of the matter and a disregard for inconvenient facts." [more]

"The CIA's March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be 'impossible,' according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq's history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I." [more]

"People nowadays are not willing to bow down before an emperor, even a benevolent one, in order to be democratised. They will protest, and the ensuing pain will be felt by the imperial power as well as by its subjects. For Americans, the pain will not be just a matter of budget deficits and body bags; it will also be a blow to the very heart of what makes them American—their constitutional belief in freedom." [more]

"One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for 'closure' could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." [more]

"Since the war, Iraq has started to look like a fertile ground for terrorists. The American invasion made this possible. The United States has created what it went to war to prevent." [more]

"[The US Treasury] has been contacting an undisclosed number of protesters who placed themselves in harm's way before the war, warning them that they face $10,000 fines for violating U.S. sanctions that forbade most travel to Iraq and commerce with Saddam Hussein's regime. If they don't pay, the human shields face up to 10 years in prison." [more]

"John Donvan, correspondent, ABC News’ Nightline: Our car was literally looted in Safran the first day. The very first day, I reported that it was unstable in the place where just yesterday people were cheering. And our editors in New York were saying, 'Well, John, could you get us some of those pictures of people cheering?'" [more]

"The fuel shortages in southern Iraq have led to problems far more dire than gasoline lines. According to a report issued Wednesday by the Agency for International Development, the shortages 'are threatening security and some humanitarian operations.' They 'are endangering hospital patients' in hospitals that depend on generators, the agency said, adding that 'cold storage for medicines and vaccination programs are also affected.' " [more]

"British armored vehicles patrolled Basra's streets as crowds barricaded roads and hurled chunks of concrete at passing cars in a second day of demonstrations. British forces guarded gasoline stations and rationed fuel in an effort to contain the violence." [more]

"The third officer, who was uniformed, was shot as he got out from the front passenger seat and held his hands in the air, holding his coalition-issued yellow police badge and shouting 'police, police', said Nahi." [more]

"On 7 March, Dr ElBaradei told the Security Council that UN and independent forensic experts had found that what purported to be Niger government documents, in which Mr Zahawie's name was mentioned, were 'not authentic'. That demolished a key pillar of the Anglo-American case for war, but by then it was too late." [more]

"A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon." [more]

"Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital." [more]

"According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the [missle]. Not only [its] alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes." [more]

"The first evidence that the home-team body count is being whitewashed has to do with the 'cause of death.' There are increasing reports that soldiers killed due to hostile action are listed by the Pentagon as killed in accidents." [more]

"American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs — similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War — in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad." [more]

"The Army is telling troops to take precautions as it tries to figure out the cause of pneumonia cases, including two deaths, among forces in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns." [more]

" 'When I examined the task organization, my estimate was totally contrary to this asshole Rumsfeld, who went in light and on the cheap, all based upon this rosy scenario. I never thought this would be a fight without resistance. And there was another guy who thought the same way I did; his name is Saddam Hussein.' " [more]

"What would the occupying forces and their families make of Bush's executive order 13303, promulgated without fanfare in May, which gives sweeping powers to US oil companies operating in Iraq while granting immunity to them for the consequences of any of their actions in exploiting the oil?" [more]

"He said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. 'Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive.' " [more]

"Mr. Stueve could not specify how many soldiers are in hotels, but said Walter Reed is referring about 20 patients or their relatives to hotels each day. Hotels in Silver Spring, just across the D.C. line, offer discounted rates for outpatients and their families, and the military pays the bill." [more]

"In fact Ekeus was perfectly well aware from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier, after the first Gulf war. Ekeus learned this in 1995 from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military aides." [more]

"The administration is not seeking a second resolution because it is satisfied with the financial and peacekeeping assistance it is getting from other countries willing to participate without a broader U.N. mandate." [more]

"The administration of President Bush has intensified efforts to seek troops from India, Pakistan and Turkey in order to bolster a multinational force that now includes troops mostly from former Soviet republics and Latin American nations." [more]

"According to the aide, by the mid-1990s 'it was common knowledge among the leadership' that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons." [more]

"When Iraqi ex-soldiers demonstrated outside Bremer's office at the former Presidential Palace, US troops shot two of them dead. When Falujah residents staged a protest as long ago as April, the American military shot 16 dead. Another 11 were later gunned down in Mosul." [more]

"The history of mutual antagonism between Washington and Al-Jazeera goes back to the 2001 bombardment of Afghanistan when, after the Arab station showed videotape of Osama Bin Laden, an American Cruise missile exploded in their Kabul bureau. Then in the last days of the invasion of Iraq this year, after the channel beamed pictures of Iraqi civilians mutilated by US air raids and tape of American prisoners in Iraqi hands, a US jet targeted the station's Baghdad bureau, killing one of its senior reporters." [more]

"A Bush aide outlined a long-term strategy in which the United States would spread its values through Iraq and the Middle East much as it transformed Europe in the second half of the 20th century. As outlined, the U.S. commitment to Iraq and the Middle East would be far more expansive than the administration had described to the public and the world before the Iraq war." [more]

"In 1991, after the first Gulf war, although electricity generating stations, water purification plants and telecommunications were almost totally destroyed, the Iraqis — despite sanctions — rebuilt them." [more]

"The president and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question." [more]

"So far, the United States has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Hussein had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program." [more]

"The disclosure by the Foreign Office makes it plain the CIA's objections went far beyond the well-aired dispute over whether Iraq was seeking uranium from the west African state of Niger." [more]

"Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance." [more]

"Public opinion polls published during the first week of July indicate that 60% of the American public believes that the United Nations should take leadership in post-war Iraq." [more]

"In its latest report, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee also argues that nearly two years on from the 11 September atrocity it cannot conclude the threat from al-Qaeda has diminished." [more]

"The return of a multilateral tilt signifies a correction after the Iraq war, according to some analysts. These observers also say it reveals how the US has lost ground in some central goals, and is now playing catch-up. One of those buffeted priorities is the international war on terrorism." [more]

"American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will." [more]

"Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. Continuing casualties ... are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive." [more]

The lawyers "said the war in Iraq breached international treaties such as the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and the ICC's own Statute." [more]

" 'The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,' a witness said. 'They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.' " [more]

"Sadly, the vision for a transitional government and democratic elections put forward by Wolfowitz seems to have been forgotten in the everyday pressures of postwar Iraq." [more]

"Like other examples of doublespeak, the concept of 'shock and awe' enables its users to symbolically reconcile two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its theorists use the term to plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its focus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the term while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering that force creates." [more]

The general, "whose troops usually blame the attacks on die-hard Saddam loyalists, said the sophistication of the raids had increased over the last 30 days." [more]

"Think of how in 1965 two-thirds of Americans supported the war in Vietnam, and a few years later two-thirds opposed the war. What happened in between? A gradual realization of having been lied to, an osmosis of the truth, of information seeping more and more through the cracks of the propaganda system. That is beginning to happen now. Today, all over the country, there is a growing awareness of the shortage of teachers, of nurses, of medical care, of affordable housing, of cuts in human services in every state of the union." [more]

"With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size. The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995." [more]

"Among the things Wolfowitz says the U.S. guessed incorrectly was the assumption that some Iraqi Army units would switch sides; that the Iraqi Police would help maintain security; that regime remnants would not resort to guerrilla tactics ... [and he] says it also had no idea how badly Iraq's infrastructure had been neglected over the past three decades." [more]

"Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. Detainees also said U.S. troops had shot some captives." [more]

"But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator." [more]

" 'I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction,' Wolfowitz told a group of reporters traveling with him. 'I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn't come [to Iraq] on a search for weapons of mass destruction.' " [more]

"A report prepared by the UN special representative in Iraq calls for a clear timetable for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. It also says that UN involvement will be essential in any process intended to give legitimacy to a new government." [more]

"[Andrew] Gilligan never actually uttered the phrase he has become famous for — in fact, the first mention came from John Humphrys." [more]

"The information ... significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence." [more]

"But the message of all this information — most of it unreported by the media — is that the Americans are no longer safe anywhere in Iraq: not at Baghdad airport, which they captured with so much fanfare in early April, not at their military bases nor in the streets of central Baghdad, nor in their helicopters nor on the country roads." [more]

"For organizations that opposed the war, these are busy days. Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire." [more]

"Two American soldiers were killed yesterday in northern Iraq and thousands of Shi'ites protested angrily, as hostility toward the US presence in Iraq jumped religious and regional boundaries, expanding far beyond Saddam Hussein's loyalist base." [more]

"There are those within the Bush inner circle known to be resisting the [UN] option, arguing it would be a humiliation to head back to the international body, which the government shunned in its zeal to remove Saddam Hussein from power, particularly if it was needed to bring war opponents France and Germany into the equation." [more]

The report "shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States." [more]

"Most of the administration's critics predicted that Washington would win the war but botch the peace, and so far they have turned out to be disturbingly prescient. Everything about the American plan, including the size and composition of occupying military forces, was misconceived." [more]

"The media loves the trivial and can't grasp the significant. If the United States fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as critics are claiming, the question is not whether it did so. The question is: Why did it do so? In other words, why was invading Iraq important enough to lie about — if indeed it was a lie, which is far from clear." [more]

"It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset." [more]

"As the Americans retreat into siege mode, they are cutting themselves entirely off from a populace that was not hostile when they arrived as glorious invaders. The US arguably lost this war in the first days after the 'fall' of Baghdad on April 9. Those days of widespread looting in April are deeply ingrained in Iraqi minds. There would be a lot more respect for a victor able to preserve the riches of a conquered country. And now the talk in the Iraqi street is still of those days in June when there was no electricty but oil exports had resumed." [more]

"The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a daily debacle, say experts, because the Washington ideologues who planned the war were living in a fantasy." [more]

"A CIA veteran says a growing faction of the U.S. intelligence community is furious over the way the administration corrupted the system — and that the nation's security is at grave risk." [more]

"Dr Kelly, 59, had been caught up in a row between the BBC and the government about the use of intelligence reports in the run-up to the war with Iraq." [more]

"The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that ... the vice president dismissed [contradictory] information out of hand and disparaged its source. He did not, however, refute it. Refutations plunge you into the realm of facts, where this administration is exquisitely uncomfortable." [more]

"[A] soldier's death raised the number of combat fatalities in the Iraq war to 146, one shy of the combat death toll of US soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War." [more]

A UNICEF official said that "the casualties were the result of handling arms, ammunition and cluster bombs dumped at several hundred sites around Iraq. Hundreds of surface-to-air missiles abandoned by the now-disbanded Iraqi army, many of them damaged and unstable, also pose a serious threat." [more]

"In the crucial weeks after Saddam disappeared, American officials stood back and let a flood of guns wash over Iraq." [more]

"Under fire for the CIA's handling of intelligence on Iraq, the agency's chief passes the buck back to the White House." [more]

"Soldiers who were among those who took Baghdad [were] first told they would head home May 1. Instead, they were shipped to Fallujah. Word came that they would be gone July 1. Didn't happen. Then July 18 was the date to circle. Then Aug. 1." [more]

"His job is to keep a hawk eye on dovish Colin Powell. And he's helped turn Bush foreign policy into an ideological hammer." [more]

"The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear." [more]

"There is one group of nations with large numbers of well-trained troops, experienced in peacekeeping and in working with the United States Army. It's called NATO. The problem for the Bush administration is that calling on NATO means bringing France and Germany back into the fold. My suggestion: get over it." [more]

"After USAID gave SSA the Iraq contract, its security office discovered that the firm did not have the necessary security clearance. Instead of revoking the contract and awarding it to a company with the correct clearance credentials, USAID waived the requirement." [more]

"...we just have to be patient. It's been 10 weeks now. We've got a wonderful team of people working on the problems. They are intelligent, they are serious, they are purposeful, and they are going to keep looking..." [more]

"Nine U.N. agencies are now operating in Iraq, doing many of the jobs the U.S. military was apparently not prepared to tackle." [more]

"Iraqi scientists I met insist that the combination of U.S. bombing, U.N. inspections, disarmament efforts, unilateral destruction by Iraqi officials, and stiff U.N. sanctions had indeed eliminated Saddam's illicit weapons by the mid-'90s." [more]

"The theory that WMD were destroyed just before the invasion is, however, unlikely. The Iraqis did not seem capable of the organised destruction, which would have been no small task. Places where such destruction would have taken place show no sign of recent use." [more]

"So the president again has misled the American public and indeed the world. When, a month ago, he was in Poland and said, the fact that we had these two labs is proof that we have weapons of mass destruction. It's proof of nothing more than the president has mislead, has fabricated, we don't have a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq to justify this war. What we have is a quagmire with Americans dying on almost a daily basis and no end in site." [more]

"The Pentagon has seen the fatal flaw of hitching itself to volatile groups like the Islamists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Iraqi exile groups who had no popular base at home. It seems dangerously myopic that the U.S. is even considering resurrecting the Rajavis and their army of Stepford wives." [more]

"The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan." [more]

"U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein may be organizing guerrilla operations against occupation forces and financing them with money set aside before the war, according to senior commanders and field officers here." [more]

"Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 'in a dramatic new light' after September 11." [more]

"Senior officials in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government say they no longer believe weapons of mass destruction will be uncovered in Iraq, British news organizations reported today." [more]

"There are nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, some of them under fire from anti-U.S. forces. 'We need to not develop an expectation that all of these difficulties will go away in one month or two months or three months,' Franks testified." [more]

"The measure said administering and rebuilding Iraq likely will cost tens of billions of dollars over several years, and projected Iraqi oil revenues will not meet those costs." [more]

"Mr Blair refused to apologise for inadvertently 'misrepresenting' the dossier issued in February as 'intelligence' when large parts of it were culled from an article in a Middle East journal based on a PhD thesis." [more]

"If the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses ... At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted." [more]

"The administration that had 100 percent certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction has zero percent certainty as to where they are now. The White House and the president's defenders have reverted to their fall-back humanitarian position — that the removal of Hussein was justification enough for the war." [more]

"US troops patrolling the capital and other areas have been attacked several times a day. Iraqi police and civilians perceived to be working with the occupying forces have also been targeted." [more]

" 'Then there are the deaths by malnutrition and dehydration as a consequence of the war which we haven't even started talking about,' Sloboda added." [more]

"Military officials are worried that a barrage of non-fatal attacks — estimated by officials at more than a dozen a day in Baghdad — will sap troop morale and cause people to reevaluate official pronouncements that armed resistance to the U.S. occupation is small and militarily insignificant." [more]

"Intelligence reports suggesting Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger were based on false information, including forged documents. What's even more embarrassing is that the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department had themselves earlier concluded the reports were almost certainly not true." [more]

"[Bush's] statement was apparently primarily based on American intelligence ... but many analysts did not believe those reports at the time, and were shocked to hear the president make such a flat, declarative statement." [more]

"The silence of Saddam's inner circle on the topic so far tends to confirm the story told by General Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who fled to Jordan in 1995 ... General Kamel said Saddam had ordered the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in 1991, but had also issued instructions that plans, designs and equipment to start the programme again, when possible, should be secretly retained." [more]

"I address you brothers from inside proud Iraq to say: Your main task now -- as Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen; Shiites and Sunnis; Muslims and Christians; and under all titles and of all religions and denominations -- is to expel the invaders from our country." [more]

" 'Faced with continued resistance, Department of Defense now plans to keep a larger force in Iraq than anticipated for a period of time,' Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, explained in a statement to families a month ago. 'I appreciate the turmoil and stress that a continued deployment has caused,' he added." [more]

"Tony Blair and his government did not mislead parliament or doctor evidence to justify the war on Iraq, a parliamentary committee concluded on Monday. The government, though, did get its knuckles wrapped over its dossiers on Iraq's weapons." [more]

"Delegates held the inaugural session on Monday of a new Baghdad city council, hailed by the United States as a major step towards democracy in Iraq even though it has only an advisory role." [more]

"Attacks on US soldiers are becoming increasingly frequent and are now taking place in the capital and other cities where previously there had been little resistance to the occupation." [more]

"Americans attacked an Iraqi village several miles away where the convoy had stopped earlier in the evening. Several houses were destroyed and a number of villagers injured. Two were killed — Hakima Khalil and her one-year-old daughter Maha. The residents of the village could not understand why they had become targets as they claimed the convoy was just a group of livestock smugglers." [more]

"The reward for Saddam matches the $25 million that Washington is offering for its other top fugitive: Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader missing since U.S. forces helped dislodge the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." [more]

"Operating under the auspices of the American anti-war coalition, United for Peace and Justice, the group intends to publish details of contracts obtained by corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel and act as a clearing-house for information on allegations of civil rights abuses." [more]

"The U.S. military said a bomb-making class inside a mosque triggered a deadly explosion that enraged the Iraqi town of Falluja, where residents vowed Wednesday to wage holy war against U.S. occupiers." [more]

"Bremer's request for more U.S. troops and civilian help underscores how difficult it has been for his small civilian staff and about 158,000 U.S.-led troops to meet the demands of Iraqis for security and other basic needs." [more]

"A leader of a prominent Shiite group accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of reneging on pledges to hand over power to local political groups in Iraq and blamed Americans for failing to secure Iraq after Saddam's fall and 'plunging the country into an unending cycle of violence.' " [more]

" 'We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or ... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country,' [Bremer] declared at the weekend. 'We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country.' " [more]

Paul Bremer: "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country." [more]

"Questions were growing on Monday over the funding and composition of the 30,000 additional international troops the US expects to see deployed in Iraq by September." [more]

"President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." [more]

"An Iraqi scientist who has provided what the White House yesterday called key components and blueprints for an illicit nuclear program was initially ignored by the Pentagon and jailed by U.S. military forces in Baghdad as he tried to get the materials into American hands." [more]

"The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons." [more]

"Violence [has] served notice that an aggressive weapons confiscation campaign, begun throughout Iraq on June 15, could have serious consequences in the conservative rural Shi'a areas." [more]

" 'Get me out of here,' said one female U.S. soldier stationed in central Baghdad when told about the latest grenade attack. 'This place is too dangerous.' " [more]

"The conservative Sunni Muslim town has been a flashpoint since US troops shot dead at least 16 Iraqis at a demonstration in late April." [more]

" 'I don't think the American people fully appreciate just how long we are going to be committed here and what the overall cost will be,' said Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." [more]

"A US defense official with knowledge of the intelligence that led to the strike, said reports that Saddam or his sons were hit were 'wishful thinking.' " [more]

"Leading U.S. senators said on Monday they believed American troops could be in Iraq for at least five years and knowing the fate of Saddam Hussein and his sons was key for the future stability of the country." [more]

"Residents of Karrada Dakhel commercial street said the explosion occurred in a large garbage bin which caught fire." [more]

"The Americans call the guerrillas '[Hussein] loyalists' and 'Ba'athist fighters,' in the same way they used to dismiss the Vietnamese as 'communists.' Recently in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, it was clearly not the presence of Ba'athists or Saddamists, but the brutal behaviour of the occupiers, who fired point-blank at a crowd, that inspired the resistance." [more]

"The United States isn't perceived as a cultivator of democracy in Iraq. It is seen as a military occupier that supports democracy and free speech when they serve its interest, but suppresses both when they don't." [more]

The GIs spoke of shooting civilians at roadblocks. Sgt Meadows said: "When they used white flags we were told to stop them at 400 metres out and then strip them down naked then bring them through. Most obeyed the order. We knew about others who had problems with [Iraqis] carrying white flags and then opening up on our guys. We knew about every trick they were trying to do. Then they'd use cars to try and drive at us. They were men, women and children. That day we shot up a lot of cars." [more]

"Foreign policy is always difficult in a democracy. Democracy requires openness. Yet foreign policy requires a level of secrecy that frees it from oversight and exposes it to abuse. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have long held that the intelligence agencies—the most clandestine of foreign policy institutions—should be insulated from political interference in much the same way as the higher reaches of the judiciary. As the Tower Commission, established to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, warned in November 1987, 'The democratic processes ... are subverted when intelligence is manipulated to affect decisions by elected officials and the public.' " [more]

"An American soldier was killed and another was wounded today in a drive-by shooting in central Baghdad, the latest in a series of assaults on the United States military." [more]

"Two former senior British ministers accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of deceiving the public at the start of a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday into the government's justification for launching a war with Iraq." [more]

"An investigation reveals that Pvt. Lynch — still in the hospital after 67 days — suffered bone-crushing injuries in a crash during the ambush." [more]

"[T]here are signs that operations such as this one, code-named 'Spartan Scorpion,' may be creating as many problems as it solves. Here in Fallujah, lately the hub of anti-US resistance, locals say they are seeing far too few signs of promised reconstruction — and far too many of an outright occupation." [more]

"A British scientist and biological weapons expert [said]: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were — facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.' " [more]

"A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons." [more]

"On Monday, officers recalled the assault as sophisticated and organised. 'They were definitely not some kids with pistols. It was well planned and well executed. They knew where we were in the building. They had done reconnaissance,' said Major George Pitt." [more]

"The AP excluded all counts done by hospitals whose written records did not distinguish between civilian and military dead, which means hundreds, possibly thousands, of victims in Iraq's largest cities and most intense battles aren't reflected in the total." [more]

"Bush spoke of Iraq's weapons program, rather than its weaponry, and referred to it in the past tense. Asked to clarify Bush's remarks, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush did not intend to make a distinction between weapons and weapons programs. 'The president, in saying programs, also applies that to weapons,' the spokesman said. Fleischer also said Bush believed Iraq had weapons when the war began." [more]

"Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address?" [more]

"US military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties even as pressure mounts on US President George W. Bush to explain why no banned arms have been found." [more]

"Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, [Bush] made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake — acts of war against another nation. Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false." [more]

"For nearly three weeks, hundreds of villagers who live in the shadow of the high earthen berm and barbed wire fences that surrounded the labyrinth of the Iraqi nuclear program here bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels." [more]

"In the small town of Hit, soldiers responded to a rocket-propelled grenade attack two weeks ago by staging a house-to-house search for weapons. The raids unleashed a furor in the religiously conservative area, as men expressed outrage over soldiers' barging into homes where the women were, in the Iraqis' view, immodestly dressed. That was all it took to spark a furious attack on the local police station, where Army officials were meeting. Before it was over, two soldiers were wounded by a grenade tossed into the compound and Army reinforcements fought their way in to rescue the injured; after they left, demonstrators ravaged the abandoned compound." [more]

"American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment." [more]

"'We said at the meeting that we want an elected political council and an elected constitutional council,' Hamed Bayati of the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) told Reuters. 'We will not participate in an administration that would be appointed by ambassador Bremer.' " [more]

"With that kind of output, with low production costs attracting consumer states away from higher-cost regions like the North Sea, an Iraqi oil industry managed by US-based companies would have the capacity 'to bring OPEC to its knees,' according to Chalabi." [more]

"The Pentagon's intelligence service reported last September that it had no reliable evidence that Iraq had chemical agents in weaponized form." [more]

"Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?" [more]

" 'Maybe all they're doing is building a highway to put in McDonald's and sell hamburgers. But why go that way? I think we're in bed with Kuwait. I think we're pumping oil out of Iraq to pay for this war.' " [more]

"The U.S. occupation authority has decided to handpick between 25 and 30 Iraqis to serve on an interim political council to advise U.S. officials on day-to-day governance issues rather than convene a large assembly where Iraqi delegates would debate the form and membership of their transitional administration, a senior U.S. official said today." [more]

"[T]he Muslim Youth Society championed a campaign to raise the awareness of Iraqis to the threats of drugs and 'erase all traces of occupation that destroyed the cohesiveness of the Iraqi society.' " [more]

"The top Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence was 'simply wrong' in its assessment that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war, but he stopped short of saying there was an overall intelligence failure." [more]

"The stereotype that terrorists are driven to extremes by economic deprivation may never have held anywhere, least of all in the Middle East. New research by Claude Berrebi, a graduate student at Princeton, has found that 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers are from impoverished families, while about a third of the Palestinian population is in poverty. A remarkable 57 percent of suicide bombers have some education beyond high school, compared with just 15 percent of the population of comparable age." [more]

"An unidentified expert in Britain's intelligence network told the BBC the 50-page document contained unreliable information and was 'transformed' on instructions from Blair's office in the week before its release last September, to make it 'sexier.'" [more]

"The war was supposed to be over. But the deaths of four U.S. soldiers and the wounding of 15 others in just two days in armed attacks across Iraq raise the troubling prospect that a fresh wave of violent resistance to U.S. occupation is beginning." [more]

"By agreeing to [Turkish] conditions, the U.S. government essentially took control of the region around the oil fields. Even if Kurdish self-rule takes root and expands, in other words, the area would remain under strong U.S. influence. From the viewpoint of Middle Eastern nations, the United States appears to be positioning itself to seize oil rights and dominate the north under the guise of supporting the Kurds." [more]

"If the war on terror was supposed to make the world safer, it has failed, and has given governments an excuse to abuse human rights in the name of state security, [Amnesty's report] said." [more]

"The failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prime justification for an immediate invasion, or definitive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda has raised serious questions about the quality of American intelligence and even dark hints that the data may have been manipulated to support a pre-emptive war." [more]

"The coalition demanded that the United Nations play the lead role in rebuilding Iraq, while safeguarding human rights and being allowed to send its weapons inspectors back into the country." [more]

"US troops will be given orders to arrest any Iraqis who carry or sell guns, it was announced today. Forces were also 'aggressively targeting' looters, but they denied reports that they had been issued with a shoot to kill policy." [more]

"Veteran senators from both parties, expressing some of the strongest congressional concern to date about the civil disorder in Iraq, appealed to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday to quickly bring the situation under control." [more]

"The team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is ending its operation without having found proof that Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons." [more]

A very thorough analysis of the Administration's intelligence that was used to justify the war in iraq. [more]

"A top humanitarian agency urged US and British forces to do more to restore security in Iraq as the five opposition leaders tapped by Washington to form the core of a new government were due to meet." [more]

"The medical team that cared for Lynch at the hospital formerly known as Saddam Hospital is only now beginning to appreciate how grand a myth was built around the four hours the U.S. raiding party spent with them early on April Fool's Day. And they are disappointed." [more]

"The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city's 19 largest hospitals. The civilian death toll was almost certainly higher." [more]

"U.S. soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a nighttime demonstration against the American presence here after people shot at them with automatic rifles, soldiers said Tuesday. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured. The demonstrators insisted they were unarmed." [more]

"[A] 70-year-old great-grandfather is grieving for six members of his family — one son, three grandsons and two of their wives — who died when a missile exploded on their doorstep, demolishing two houses and leaving a large crater in the street." [more]

"The premise on which the White House sold this war to Americans — Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that were a direct threat to us — has yet to be validated. Some who accepted that are beginning to feel a little bit had. If you're going to invade a country without direct provocation, the justification should be ironclad both before and after the fact." [more]

"A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq." [more]

"After resigning [as a US diplomat in Greece], I came to see myself as the canary in the mine shaft, the squeamish soul that keeled over first when our policy became toxic. [The Greeks'] view is that of the majority of the Muslim world: The United States put itself into the ranks of evil by failing to impose the just peace in the Middle East its power allegedly permitted it." [more]

"Leaders of the new interim administration in Iraq have signalled that they will not accept moves by sections of the country's majority Shiite community to create an Islamic state." [more]

"Why have American and British Forces not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The most plausible answer is that there are none, in the true sense of the word, even though forces are likely eventually to come across some very unpleasant weapons created by Saddam Hussein." [more]

"US soldiers stripped four suspected Iraqi thieves naked and burned their clothes before pushing them into the street." [more]

"Thus the only viable solution for the transient Iraqi authority is likely to be a collective of three leaders — one Sunni, one Shiite and one Kurd." [more]

"US officials are treading cautiously in naming an interim administration to represent Iraq's mosaic of a population. They have distanced themselves from self-proclaimed Baghdad governor Mohammad Mohsen Zubeidi and remained cool to key opposition figure Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress." [more]

"Looters operating right under the nose of U.S. forces emptied the museum of priceless antiquities documenting the development of mankind in ancient Mesopotamia, one of the world's earliest civilizations. Their theft has left the international archaeological community in shock. Two cultural advisers to the administration of President Bush resigned in protest at the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the looting." [more]

"As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country." [more]

"US officials were unmoved by accusations regarding the untidiness of 'freedom'. Instead, the hawks in the Bush administration started preparing for the next target." [more]

"U.S. intervention is a bad idea, because people want to make their own history, even if the face of oppression is like Saddam Hussein's. A quick and easy victory over Iraq must not be the model for a series of future campaigns of regime change around the world." [more]

"The [art] museum was No. 2 on a list of 16 sites deemed crucial to protect. Financial institutions topped the list, including the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a burned-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it. The list also included various ministries such as defense, foreign affairs and interior. Just one ministry was protected by coalition forces from the beginning of the occupation, the Ministry of Oil, which was last on the list." [more]

"This is nation-building, Republican-style, with huge contracts awarded in secret to politically connected companies." [more]

"The lack of basic services such as power, water and police protection has hobbled the city's economy and fueled a mixture of rage and resentment against American forces. Iraqis are angry that U.S. troops rarely assume the role of police and resentful when they do." [more]

"The US has denied it is dollarising the Iraqi economy as the Federal Reserve reportedly flies in tens of millions of dollars." [more]

"At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when US troops fired on a crowd angered by a speech by the new US-backed governor, witnesses reported." [more]

"Although only a handful of them have gone public, at least several hundred U.S. soldiers have applied for conscientious objector status since January. " [more]

"The Pentagon said yesterday that it has no plans to determine how many Iraqi civilians may have been killed or injured or suffered property damage as a result of U.S. military operations in Iraq." [more]

"In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of Antiquities was the single most important site in the country." [more]

"On at least six occasions, [Rumsfeld] insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. His faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. 'They've got no resources,' a former high-level intelligence official said." [more]

"Experts say the move, which began four days ago in a northern Iraqi town, may violate international law." [more]

President Bush linked war on Iraq to his global anti-terrorism campaign in a speech to the US Coast Guard, and argued that Saddam Hussein or his terrorist allies may try to strike America in retaliation for the US-led fighting. Several hundred protesters questioned this threat and accused the Bush Administration of waging a needless and destructive war. [more]

"Eleven days on, America's war to 'liberate' Iraq means only inexplicable grief to these poor Shia Muslims from the suburb of Shu'la in north-east Baghdad." [more]

"Ten days into the invasion of Iraq, the political imperative of waging a short and decisive campaign is increasingly at odds with the military necessity of preparing for a protracted, more violent and costly war, according to senior military officials. Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war." [more]

"A shuddering sense of outrage at President Bush and the United States fell over the Arab world today as television networks and newspapers reported a U.S. air assault that Iraqi officials said killed 58 people at a vegetable market in Baghdad." [more]

"While American military planners have concentrated since the 1991 Persian Gulf War on making more and better use of high technology, their Iraqi counterparts appear to have been taking lessons from every battle the United States, Britain and Israel have failed to win." [more]

"US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forced his military chiefs to accept his idea that a relatively small, lightly armed force should go to war with Iraq, it is being alleged." [more]

"Complicating the humanitarian crisis has been a behind the scenes international struggle against the Bush administration's militarization of humanitarian aid." [more]

"The Army's senior ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, said today that overextended supply lines and a combative adversary using unconventional tactics have stalled the U.S. drive toward Baghdad and increased the likelihood of a longer war than many strategists had anticipated." [more]

"We had a great day,' Sergeant Schrumpf said. 'We killed a lot of people.'" [more]

"US and British military officials said that they had no information and one military chief even hinted that they believed Saddam's regime might have been responsible. Then a US military spokesman at Central Command in Qatar said that coalition aircraft were targeting missiles and launchers in a residential area of Baghdad at around the time of the explosion. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said, that while no bombs or missiles were fired at the district, he could not rule out a stray missile." [more]

"After six days, American and British warplanes and warships have launched several thousand bombs and cruise missiles against Iraqi air defenses, communication centers, headquarters, Republican Guard troops and other military targets. But at least until today, Mr. Hussein was still appearing on the official television, his government was still passing orders to its field commanders, and there were no immediate signs of the mass surrenders or defections many American officials had hoped for." [more]

"The Army Corps of Engineers didn't solicit bids for the Iraqi oil contract announced Monday. Rather, it said it awarded the work to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, based on the firm's previous government contract for planning a response to Iraqi well fires and managing oil fields." [more]

"The apparent lack of rebellion in Basra is a disappointment for the coalition, which had hoped to take the predominantly Shia Muslim city without a fight and — with the help of humanitarian aid — make it an example of the benefits of occupation." [more]

"With the new engagement in Iraq, the Pentagon and television news coverage are blurring the lines between movies and real life as never before, turning viewers into 24-hour couch voyeurs." [more]

"The Bush administration had conveyed the impression that the Iraqi government was shaky, that much of the army was not likely to fight and that the Iraqi people would welcome the invasion force with cheers and flowers. While some of those things may still occur, so far the people greeting American troops have been much cooler than many had hoped." [more]

"The reality of the situation on the ground in southern Iraq is so insecure that relief workers say it will take at least several days and probably weeks before aid can really start being delivered into the country." [more]

"Fearing friendly fire incidents with U.S. forces and clashes with Iraqi Kurds, the United States opposes Turkish intervention." [more]

"Thousands of anti-war demonstrators, stretching across several blocks of midtown Manhattan, marched down Broadway today to voice their opposition to the ongoing war against Iraq." [more]

"While Americans watch Baghdad burn from a distance, most of the Arab channels have corespondents inside the city, and they emphasize reporting of civilian casualties. There's also lots of news about worldwide protests." [more]

"The United States launched a blistering series of bombing attacks on Baghdad and other Iraqi cities after dusk today, destroying entire rows of buildings in the capital and leaving parts of the city ablaze." [more]

"About 500 servicemembers filed for conscientious objector status during the Persian Gulf War, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Peace groups say as many as three times that number refused to fight, and many served prison sentences up to 18 months." [more]

"As they prepare to head across the border, U.S. military commanders fear that Iraq will become consumed by "rolling civil strife" erupting all around advancing troops, confronting them with the dilemma of how and whether to intervene. Senior U.S. officers, basing their predictions on intelligence and past experience, said they fear thousands of Iraqis could die." [more]

"As the U.S. attack on Baghdad gets underway, the military strategy dubbed 'Shock and Awe' by Pentagon war planners is emerging as a lightning rod for criticism in the international online media." [more]

"Overriding global protests and the concerns of longtime allies, President Bush ordered the first pre-emptive war in modern American history, sending U.S. forces into Iraq and warning the American people Wednesday night that his drive to topple Saddam Hussein could be long and difficult." [more]

"France and Germany have spoken out against war with Iraq at a meeting of the UN Security Council, just hours before the American deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq expires." [more]

"As the deadline for the war on Iraq drew closer Wednesday, some 300 people demonstrated in Manhattan against a U.S. invasion and called on others to leave work and school to increase the voice of protest." [more]

"An invasion was now certain, White House aides said, even if Saddam and his sons fled at the last minute. In that case, the American forces would still enter Iraq to assure order, find and destroy banned weapons, help rebuild, and lay the foundations for a new government." [more]

"Appeals for continued diplomatic engagement with Baghdad were summarily dismissed by the United States ambassador to the United Nations." [more]

"The first signs were an air raid siren followed by antiaircraft fire and loud explosions over the city that appeared to be bombs. The antiaircraft fire appeared to be ineffective, striking at low altitude over the city." [more]

"Even minimal casualties and devastation will not justify overturning international norms that have prevailed for sixty years." [more]

"Again and again, Westerners have moved into the Mideast with confidence that they can impose freedom and modernity through military force. Along the way they have miscalculated support for their invasions, both internationally and in the lands they occupy. They have anointed cooperative minorities to help rule resentful majorities. They have been mired in occupations that last long after local support has vanished. They have met with bloody uprisings and put them down with brute force." [more]

"According to recent unpublicized U.S. Army War College studies being read with increasing interest by some Pentagon planners, 'The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious.' " [more]

"The country now stands at a decisive turning point, not just in regard to the Iraq crisis, but in how it means to define its role in the post-cold-war world. President Bush's father and then Bill Clinton worked hard to infuse that role with America's traditions of idealism, internationalism and multilateralism. Under George W. Bush, however, Washington has charted a very different course. Allies have been devalued and military force overvalued." [more]

"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors — conceptual structures like those we have been describing. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored." [more]

"Robin Cook has won an unprecedented standing ovation in the [British] House of Commons after telling MPs why he resigned from the government over the looming war with Iraq." [more]

"Rather than allowing Iraqis to create a federal state—which is to say, a democratic one—Foggy Bottom, which lost the argument over whether to topple an authoritarian central government in Baghdad, has settled for the next best thing: an authoritarian central government under U.S. control." [more]

"Demonstrators are planning to shut down San Francisco's Financial District, to gather by the thousands in New York's Times Square, to stage sit-ins in Washington, D.C. [and] to try to breach security at Vandenberg Air Force Base ... They're going not just to protest, but to interfere." [more]

"Leaks this week indicated Congress can expect a special spending request of $60 billion to $95 billion to pay for the first six months to a year of war and its aftermath." [more]

"On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's." [more]

"Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks." [more]

"We should outlaw the term collateral damage. Above all else, the damage done by the weapons of war is to the flesh, muscle, bone and psyches of real people, some of them children. If we're willing to inflict such terrible damage, we should acknowledge it and not hide behind euphemisms." [more]

"The U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq may be withdrawn because of France's threat to veto it, the Spanish foreign minister said Wednesday." [more]

"Washington acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Tony Blair’s political troubles could force the US to go into battle alone against Iraq." [more]

"Facing almost certain defeat, the United States and Britain delayed a vote to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm and signaled they might compromise to try to win support from [UN] Security Council members who oppose a rush to war." [more]

With Pakistan's abstention, the United States must now win the votes of all five undecided nations — Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Mexico — in the UN Security Council in order for the resolution authorizing war on Iraq to pass without a veto. [more]

"For the first time since the Panama invasion in 1989, the US may be fighting a largely urban war. Thus the tactics and technology it uses will be crucial in determining the level of casualties and perhaps the length of the war itself." [more]

"A coalition of Kurdish nongovernmental organizations made their first attempt Saturday to convince the villagers bordering Saddam Hussein's Iraq to respect human rights and avert a blood bath of revenge." [more]

"A U.S. diplomat resigned from government service on Monday in protest of President Bush's preparations to attack Iraq, the second to do so in less than a month." [more]

"If the U.S. issues the expected warning, [Annan] can and should announce that the U.S. has no authority to evict the inspectors, who are United Nations employees. Furthermore, Annan can say that he will not withdraw the inspectors from Iraq unless he is ordered to do so by the U.N. Security Council or the inspectors report that they are not being allowed to do their job." [more]

" 'It's a fact that the children of Iraq are extremely vulnerable,' said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. 'Their health, their nutrition, their access to safe water — all of which are weak already — will be further jeopardized in a war.' " [more]

"It costs the Department of Defense roughly $11,000 to lure in each recruit, a price tag that has doubled in the last decade, in part because 64 percent of young Americans say they definitely would not volunteer for military service under any conditions." [more]

Pentagon officials have provided options for war on Iraq bypassing Turkey, and speculation is growing that strikes could be launched as early as the middle of next week. [more]

"More than a thousand high school and college students walked out of their classrooms and gathered in Union Square Park in Manhattan at noon yesterday to protest the possible war in Iraq. The protests were part of a nationwide effort that organizers said included as many as 400 campuses." [more]

"The real aim is to get rid of Saddam. A stated intention to put Iraqi leaders on trial for war crimes makes that goal crystal clear. No foreseeable Iraqi disarmament will satisfy the Bush administration." [more]

"[Front-line] reporters have to go through a mini-boot camp, under the guidance of drill sergeants and training officers. In theory, the pseudo-basic training will get them in physical shape to slog through desert sands. In fact, it will acclimatize them to the military mindset and make them think that they’re part of the team. Instead of objective reporters, they’ll be participants." [more]

"Alleged U.S. spying at the U.N. — huge news in the rest of the world, ignored here — provides fodder to festering anti-Americanism." [more]

"For Iraqi exiles, the televised destruction of Baghdad elicits grief and anger, not shock and awe." [more]

"Iraq has destroyed four of its banned al-Samoud II missiles, meeting a deadline imposed by chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix." [more]

"The diplomat, the political counselor at the United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, 'Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.' " [more]

"If U.S.-led forces attack Iraq, anti-war activists around the country plan to blockade federal buildings and disrupt major business districts with large protests and nonviolent civil disobedience." [more]

"The real economic cost of Bush's empire building is twofold: It diverts attention from pressing economic problems at home and it sets the United States on a long-term imperial path that is economically ruinous." [more]

"In the event of war, American and allied forces could not assure the safety of civilians who deliberately position themselves as human shields against attack on Iraqi targets, the U.S. general who would run the war said in an Associated Press interview." [more]

"The U.N. Security Council is likely to spend the next two weeks debating war with Iraq, but the issue has already been decided: President Bush intends to go to war with or without U.N. support." [more]

"A generation of Arabs wooed by the United States and persuaded by its principles has become among the most vociferous critics of America's world view. Within its ranks are affluent businessmen with ties to the West, U.S.-educated intellectuals and liberal activists. Their ire is directed not at U.S. culture, but at preparations for a war that they believe has left them voiceless, discredited and isolated in a landscape almost universally opposed to U.S. policy." [more]

"Mexico appeared to be the first among a handful of undecided U.N. Security Council members to shift toward the U.S. position on Iraq as Canada sought to find a middle ground among members split between disarming Saddam Hussein by force or giving weapons inspectors more time." [more]

"Hundreds of thousands of opponents of a U.S. war against Iraq called and faxed their senators and the White House on Wednesday in a 'virtual march on Washington', jamming many congressional telephone lines for several hours." [more]

"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not." [more]

"The Army's chief of staff said today that several hundred thousand American troops could be required to provide security and public services in Iraq after a war to oust Saddam Hussein and disarm his military." [more]

"In important ways, the Gulf War of 2003 has already begun. From armed attacks on opposing forces to covert preparations, both the United States and Iraq are heavily involved in military actions." [more]

"Following the military maxim that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, the administration may feel it is better to warn the American public of these dangers in advance. 'There is a lot to keep us awake at night,' one senior administration official said." [more]

"A key parliamentary vote to allow foreign troops here was due to take place Tuesday but is now being postponed, much to Washington's chagrin, because Turkish officials say they have not yet received the US assurances they require." [more]

"After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a French newspaper ran the now-famous headline, 'We are all Americans.' Now, with growing resistance worldwide to the idea of a US-led war in Iraq, a new slogan — 'We are all French' — is dotting antiwar protests" [more]

"The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion." [more]

"Ringing cowbells, banging temple drums, chanting, singing, dancing and waving colorful signs, puppets and placards, the marchers moved slowly up Market in a huge anti-war demonstration. While most simply walked the route, many pushed baby carriages, underscoring the argument that war would threaten the future of children most of all." [more]

"With a new war possibly weeks or less away, the bombing stands as a reminder of the risks of civilian casualties even with such accurate firepower." [more]

"Attempts are being made to close the international divisions over what to do about Iraq. Although new UN resolutions are in the works, the prospects for war remain high." [more]

"The larger-than-expected crowds that rallied around the world fed a renewed confidence among peace activists that the message of signs carried at one of the weekend's first rallies — in Auckland, New Zealand — might yet turn out to be right: 'We can stop this war.' " [more]

"No one doubts that an Iraq conflict will hurt the area's economy, what's unclear is how much and for how long." [more]

"As he prepares for a summit meeting of European leaders on Monday, Mr. Blair is heading for the gathering armed with little more than a sense of high moral purpose and an alliance with President Bush — neither of which has done much to persuade fellow Europeans to join a war in Iraq." [more]

"The largest rallies were in London, Rome, Berlin and Paris — the heart of Western Europe — where the generally peaceful demonstrations illustrated the breadth of popular opposition to U.S. policies among traditional allies." [more]

"A sea of protesters poured through the frigid streets of midtown Manhattan today to protest a possible United States invasion of Iraq, as police hurriedly closed avenues to make way for the chanting, sign-waving, horn-tooting thousands." [more]

"The organizers of the recent Washington and San Francisco marches refuse to say anything critical of Saddam Hussein ... Whatever their views on Iraq, no one in the current peace movement has put forth a moral vision that might unite and sustain it beyond the precipice of war." [more]

"Frankly, without any real evidence, that just isn't good enough. It looks like desperation. It looks like Mr. Powell is floundering, anxiously casting about for some justification for an American attack. Is it any wonder the French are saying Non?" [more]

"Millions of protesters — many of them marching in America and the capitals of America’s traditional allies — demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq." [more]

"The United States and Britain considered giving diplomacy more time on Sunday in the face of resistance at the United Nations to their plans for war to disarm Iraq and after vast weekend peace protests." [more]

"The US on Sunday dismissed millions of anti-war protesters around the world and European-led efforts to delay a conflict with Iraq, saying they strengthened Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, and made war more rather than less likely." [more]

"While huge anti-war demonstrations have been taking place around the world, the streets of the Middle East have been relatively quiet. Political analysts say one reason is because governments in the region have don't want large demonstrations, fearing they could turn into anti-Arab government rallies." [more]

"Rallies and marches have been held in hundreds of towns and cities worldwide, attracting millions of people opposed to a US-led war against Iraq." [more]

"Despite intense pressure from the Bush administration, French President Jacques Chirac continues to maintain that France will veto a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing a war in Iraq. Today, I witnessed firsthand why Chirac maintains his firm antiwar stance." [more]

"Seattle lent its voice and lots of feet to peace demonstrations around the world yesterday, with thousands of marchers turning out for what might have been the biggest anti-war march in the city's history." [more]

"To Nile Delta villagers, a war on Iraq would be unjust — and a disaster for Egypt's economy." [more]

"As diplomatic and military preparations continued toward a possible war with Iraq, anti-war protests stretched around the globe yesterday And although the demonstrations in the United States paled in comparison to those in Rome, Berlin and London, marches and rallies took place in more than 150 American cities." [more]

"The Bush administration faced broad opposition in the U.N. Security Council today to its quest for authorization for military action to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and destroy any weapons of mass destruction." [more]

"One ... beautiful movement now being organized world-wide [is that] people are being asked to send small packets of rice to President Bush with a simple note asking that the rice be sent to feed the Iraqis. As it says in the Old Testament: 'If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat' (Proverbs 25:21)." [more]

"Europeans consider North Korea a greater threat [than Iraq]. Imagine what a sense of security we all would feel if, as in Iraq, 100 inspectors were proceeding with unimpeded inspections throughout North Korea, including the president's palaces." [more]

"On the streets of Baghdad, Iraqis fear that neither Osama bin Laden nor the pope will be able to help them now." [more]

"Six House members, members of the military and parents of servicemen went to federal court Thursday to try to prevent the president from launching an invasion of Iraq without an explicit declaration of war from Congress." [more]

"In very clear words, Osama bin Laden told the people of Iraq to rise up against both American aggression and against 'socialist' Saddam Hussein. So much, it seems, for Powell's case that Hussein and bin Laden are working together." [more]

"Fears that Iraq will inflict heavy casualties on British and American troops intensified yesterday when it emerged the Pentagon had ordered almost five times the number of body bags it requested before the last Gulf War. " [more]

"No war can be successfully waged if it lacks the strong support of the American people. Before pulling the trigger on war, the administration must tell the American people the full story about Iraq. So far, it has not." [more]

"Air-war strategists call it 'shock and awe': Bombard your enemy with such force that the battle quickly tips in your favor — or never has to be fought on the ground at all." [more]

"Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq [and] at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network." [more]

"All we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the story." [more]

"Sen. Edward Kennedy said he plans to introduce a resolution on Wednesday calling on President Bush to present Congress with 'convincing evidence of an imminent threat before we send troops to war with Iraq.' " [more]

"The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn't seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now." [more]

"The International Atomic Energy Agency's report that Iraq has not resumed its nuclear program has challenged one of the Bush administration's main arguments for taking military action to topple the Iraqi government." [more]

The remarks of the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency before the UN Security Council. "No prohibited nuclear activities have been identified," he said. [more]

The remarks of the chief inspector for biological and chemical weapons to the Security Council. "Regrettably, [Iraq's] 12,000-page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that will eliminate the questions [of weapons production]," he said. [more]

"Despite a policy of 'active neutrality' in the crisis with Iraq, Iran has launched a strategy of conducting business as usual with Mr. Hussein's regime while also dealing with Iraqi opposition leaders." [more]

"A look at Washington's methods — and degrees of success — in dislodging foreign leaders." [more]

"The nightmare scenario unfolds like this: Shortly after U.S. forces invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein realizes that the end is nigh. Faced with imminent defeat and near certain death, Saddam decides to authorize one final, gruesome act of terror. At the highest levels of the U.S. government, officials seriously believe [this] is possible." [more]

"I hypothesize that President Bush intends to topple Saddam in 2003 in a pre-emptive attempt to initiate massive Iraqi oil production in far excess of OPEC quotas, to reduce global oil prices, and thereby dismantle OPEC's price controls. The end-goal of the neo-conservatives is incredibly bold yet simple in purpose, to use the 'war on terror' as the premise to finally dissolve OPEC's decision-making process, thus ultimately preventing the cartel's inevitable switch to pricing oil in euros." [more]

"As the months have passed and American weapons inspectors have failed to report significant discoveries, the Bush administration has gradually shifted from dire-sounding warnings about purported Iraqi weapons toward a greater emphasis on other justifications for the war, including the desire to topple a dictator and to bring democracy to Iraq." [more]

"Saddam Hussein's top science adviser said today that he feared a United States attack might now be inevitable, regardless of what United Nations inspectors conclude about the last two months of renewed searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." [more]

"As the Pentagon continues a highly visible buildup of troops and weapons in the Persian Gulf, it is also quietly preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons in a war against Iraq, according to a report by a defense analyst." [more]

"President George Bush is determined to go to war with Saddam Hussein in the next few weeks, without UN backing if necessary, according to authoritative sources in Washington and London." [more]

"The Bush administration faced new problems today in its confrontation with Iraq as China and Russia joined U.S. allies France and Germany in rejecting early military action." [more]

"Seven in 10 Americans would give U.N. weapons inspectors months more to pursue their arms search in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that found growing doubts about an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein." [more]

"Tony Blair today refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in a conflict against Iraq. The prime minister said Britain and the US would deal with the threat from Iraq by 'any way necessary.' " [more]

"A hail of automatic rifle fire killed an American working for the U.S. military and wounded another in an ambush on their car Tuesday near a U.S. base in Kuwait where Washington is preparing for a possible war on Iraq." [more]

"Civil rights leaders and politicians around the nation observed Martin Luther King Day yesterday, many of them invoking King's name in arguing against war with Iraq." [more]

"Thousands of people — teenagers, spiritual leaders, parents with young children, veterans of past wars and others, representing several races and religions — took to the streets here on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to support social justice and oppose war in Iraq." [more]

"Fewer than 10 percent want Turkey to allow the U.S. to attack Iraq from Turkish military bases, [yet] Turkey's cooperation would be essential for opening up a northern front on Iraq." [more]

"The White House argued that France believes that Saddam Hussein still has programs in place to build weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. Iraq has denied that it has any such programs in place." [more]

"Arrests came after a youth and student march merged with another demonstration near the park across from the White House. In the days leading up to the demonstrations, some activists said that they planned to go to the White House to carry out acts of civil disobedience to show their opposition to a war with Iraq." [more]

"About 1,000 people from around the country gathered shortly after noon a block north of Pennsylvania Avenue Park in full view of the northern windows of the White House. One group included many older people, some with long experience in civil disobedience. A younger and louder group joined the the older protesters." [more]

"Mr. Bush and his war cabinet would be wise to see the demonstrators as a clear sign that noticeable numbers of Americans no longer feel obliged to salute the administration's plans because of the shock of Sept. 11 and that many harbor serious doubts about his march toward war. The protesters are raising some nuanced questions in the name of patriotism about the premises, cost and aftermath of the war the president is contemplating." [more]

"Antiwar demonstrators took to the streets again today on a weekend of protests in numerous European cities, with marchers silently or loudly objecting to America's threats to use its military might against Iraq." [more]

"Three top Bush administration officials said today they would welcome exile for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and one, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, signaled the United States might allow Hussein to escape war crimes prosecution if he voluntarily steps down." [more]

"In unusually blunt terms aimed at pre-empting the United States, France said today that it would not support any Security Council resolution for military action against Iraq in the coming weeks." [more]

"Protests against war in Iraq took place in cities across the world over the weekend amid growing public unease at plans by Washington and London to topple Saddam Hussein's regime." [more]

"Tens of thousands of antiwar demonstrators converged on Washington yesterday, making a thunderous presence in the bitter cold and assembling in the shadow of the Capitol dome to oppose a U.S. military strike against Iraq." [more]

"The slogans and banners were different at protests around the world Saturday, but the message to the United States and its allies was the same: Find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis." [more]

"A look at anti-war demonstrations Saturday in U.S. cities and around the world." [more]

"In a show of dissent that organizers said 'shattered the false myth of consensus,' for a war with Iraq, tens of thousands of protesters representing a diverse coalition for peace converged here today for a rally and march against the Bush administration's threatened use of military force against Saddam Hussein's regime." [more]

"A sea of people stretching more than one mile long and taking up four lanes of roadway marched through the nation's capitol Saturday in vocal and colorful opposition to the U.S. government's drive to war with Iraq." [more]

"United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq say they have found a dozen empty chemical warheads while searching an ammunition storage depot. The UN office in Baghdad has since told the BBC that they did not consider the discovery to be a 'smoking gun' at the present time." [more]

"Revisiting a jarring television commercial from the Cold War era, a grass-roots anti-war group has remade the 1964 'Daisy' ad, warning that a war against Iraq could spark nuclear Armageddon." [more]

"An Israeli defense source said that the talks with Simpson did not attest to Israeli involvement in the expected war, but were aimed rather at dealing with a situation in which Iraq responded to an American strike by attacking Israel." [more]

"British Prime Minister Tony Blair insists war with Iraq is not inevitable. However, his words continue to be drowned out by opposition from his own Labour party and voices across Europe." [more]

"Up to 500,000 people could suffer serious injuries during the first phase of an attack on Iraq, a confidential United Nations report says." [more]

"Critics of the peace movement ask, 'What's the alternative to war in Iraq?' It must be a rhetorical question because I can think of six off the top of my head." [more]

"Almost everyone I know assumes that it's the president's call. The war hawks assume it, the latter-day peaceniks assume it, Congress itself assumes it. Which probably means that it is, at least in practical terms, a fact." [more]

"[T]his possible Iraq war is partly about oil because it is impossible to explain the Bush team's behavior otherwise. Why are they going after Saddam Hussein with the 82nd Airborne and North Korea with diplomatic kid gloves — when North Korea already has nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them, a record of selling dangerous weapons to anyone with cash, 100,000 U.S. troops in its missile range and a leader who is even more cruel to his own people than Saddam?" [more]

"The present course of United Nations arms inspections and building diplomatic consensus should be maintained without introducing artificial military deadlines. Force must remain a last resort. It is a dangerous delusion to think that Saddam Hussein can be quickly and simply removed by American troops without serious complications within Iraq, across the Middle East and perhaps beyond." [more]

"Some independent analysts have speculated that 50,000 Iraqi civilians could die in a U.S. invasion. But others, including Daponte and Galen Carpenter, say there are far too many variables to make such a prediction. One suggests it won't matter much anyway, compared with Americans' deaths." [more]

"Washington claims that Baghdad harbors ambitions of aggression, continues to develop and stockpile weapons of mass destruction and maintains ties to Al Qaeda. Lacking solid evidence, the public must weigh Saddam Hussein's penchant for lies against the administration's own record. Based on recent history, that's not an easy choice." [more]

"In the full-court press for war with Iraq, the Bush administration deems Saddam Hussein reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational. Such a man, when mixed with nuclear weapons, is too unpredictable to be prevented from threatening the United States, the hawks say. But scrutiny of his past dealings with the world shows that Saddam, though cruel and calculating, is eminently deterrable." [more]

"No UN resolution or other international authority exists to legitimize the NFZs, which are currently the scene of an intensifying air-to-ground firefight between an armada of U.S. and British warplanes and an ineffectual Iraqi defense system. The British-American presence over Iraq is a case of might-makes-right, and Iraq's feeble attempts to defend its skies are justified under international law. Yet the NFZs are immeasurably more explosive now because a unilateral U.S. interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 ... provides a pretext for launching the war that President George W. Bush wants." [more]

"Baghdad complied with a key United Nations demand Saturday by delivering a list to weapons inspectors naming over 500 scientists linked to Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs, a U.N. official said." [more]

"U.S. Treasury and State Department officials said on Saturday they had discussed economic aid for close ally Turkey to reassure markets and ensure stability in the event of a war in neighbouring Iraq." [more]

"German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer appeared on Saturday not to rule out his country voting for military action against Iraq on the U.N. Security Council despite German insistence it will not take part in a war." [more]

"The Pentagon has ordered the Navy to prepare two aircraft carriers and two amphibious assault vessels for possible action in Iraq, defense officials said Friday." [more]

"[M]any Iraqi nationals live in quiet distrust of two governments — one that kills families of critics in exile, another known for jailing immigrants when national security is compromised. Recent reports that Washington is monitoring thousands of Iraqis in the United States as part of its war on terrorism served to underscore the apprehension." [more]

"My family and friends may think I'm a coward because I didn't fight. I think I'm a coward because I couldn't refuse." [more]

"Mr. Powell said that Iraqi defiance could not continue, and that Iraq would be disarmed by force, if necessary. But he sought to dispel any notion that war was imminent and signaled that Saddam Hussein still had a chance — albeit a fading one — to comply peacefully." [more]

"The dispute ... promises to be the last major issue in the Pentagon's consideration of that plan, as more signs point toward forces being ready to launch a wide-ranging, highly synchronized ground and air attack in six to eight weeks. Psychological operations, such as leafleting and broadcasting into Iraq, have been stepped up lately, and there is talk at the Pentagon of large-scale troop movements or mobilizations being announced soon after the holidays." [more]

"The United States on Wednesday moved closer to declaring Iraq in violation of a U.N. disarmament resolution over its weapons disclosure but U.S. officials said this would not be an immediate trigger for war." [more]

"The United States and Britain have accused the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of 'obvious falsehood' and omissions in his weapons declaration to the United Nations." [more]

"The Pentagon is preparing to use anti-personnel land mines in a war with Iraq, despite U.S. policy that calls for the military to stop using the mines everywhere in the world except Korea by 2003." [more]

"George Bush will only have succeeded in postponing the hard choice between peace and war that only presidents can make. Having begun the year in the embrace of the administration hawks, setting in motion preparations aimed at taking Baghdad within 12 months, he was convinced by the secretary of state, Colin Powell, to give diplomacy and inspections a final chance. The informed speculation in Washington is that Bush is genuinely undecided over what to do, in the face of forceful arguments on either side." [more]

"The potential fallout is murky. What happens to oil prices? Might war trigger a new recession? Would a swift victory help revive confidence?" [more]

"If the inspectors find some materials that might be used for weapons of mass destruction, they destroy them. The inspectors report to the Security Council; then most countries except the US and Britain declare that, whether or not Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction, it no longer does. Enforcement of sanctions begins to crumble and world pressure to lift them builds. To prevent this scenario, the Bush Administration is working frantically to discredit the inspection process." [more]

"The push by Washington for defectors has further pressurized the atmosphere surrounding the first week of inspections as Iraq prepares to make what the Security Council has said must be a full disclosure of its secret arms programs." [more]

"Gulbuddin, the Afghan defense official known as 'Doctor' from his former job as a surgeon, is worried about developments in the Middle East. An American invasion of Iraq, he says, could hurt his country’s efforts to build a lasting peace." [more]

"Turks overwhelmingly oppose the use of a key U.S. air base in their country in any possible attack against Iraq, a new survey found, underscoring the difficulties faced by Turkey's leaders if they assist in the U.S. campaign against Baghdad." [more]

"The impatience in Washington and Baghdad over the pace and character of the inspections did not appear serious enough for the Bush administration or the government of President Saddam Hussein to walk away from the process. But it dramatized the intense political pressure facing the U.N. inspectors, whose work has become what amounts to a tripwire for possible U.S. military action to destroy Hussein's three-decade rule." [more]

"Shiites remember that their 1991 uprising was betrayed by the Americans. 'There is a very deep suspicion' that another U.S. action 'might lead to another massacre,' says Sharistani." [more]

"If events do not come to a head soon after Dec. 8, the pressure for action will dissipate and the weather will make conflict impossible until next fall. And you cannot replay this movie. America’s Arab allies like Qatar and Kuwait will not find credible Washington’s renewed bellicosity and will not stick their necks out yet again, the inspections process will have become more political and France and Russia will have gained support in the Security Council." [more]

"Although it is difficult to predict how much Americans would pay for a new war with Iraq, one fact seems indisputable: It will be many times more than the cost of the last war, if only because other countries are much more reluctant to share the burden." [more]

"Recent studies suggest that even a successful military campaign in Iraq could carry a hefty price tag." [more]

"Iraqis, resigned to war, are trying hard to get on with their lives." [more]

"Dr Richard Perle stunned MPs by insisting a 'clean bill of health' from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine." [more]

The leaders of NATO demanded that Iraq "fully and completely" comply with UN weapons inspections, but did not suggest the allies would necessarily support a military action against Baghdad. [more]

"Why would the Security Council spend two months deciding whether to authorize the use of force if its decision were not binding? How can the council's decision bind Iraq but not the United States?" [more]

"The American plan to invade Iraq approach[es] international politics with strategies that are unilateralist; rooted in a new and radical doctrine of preventive war which breaks free from just war doctrine, doctrines of self defense, even doctrines of judicial preemption; that are narrowly militaristic and that are unaccompanied by economic and civic strategies; that are focused on nation states rather than on the new non-governmental criminal agencies and groups that represent terrorism." [more]

"The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending American universities or working at private corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United States-led war against Iraq, officials said." [more]

"Far from doing their jobs alerting readers and viewers to this astonishing transition in US foreign policy ... the New York Times, the Washington Post, suddenly began to run a lot of stories on the supposed intelligence links between Iraq and Bin Laden. Eight stories in one week, I recall. Each sourced to administration officials, intelligence officials, diplomats — all of them, of course, anonymous." [more]

"The Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations said today that Baghdad had accepted the Security Council resolution demanding that weapons inspectors be allowed back into Iraq, but denied that his country had any weapons of mass destruction." [more]

"Iraq's Parliament on Monday recommended the rejection of last week's U.N. Security Council" [more]

"President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad." [more]

"United Nations weapons inspectors plan to force an early test of Saddam Hussein's intentions by demanding a comprehensive list of weapons sites and checking whether it matches a list of more than 100 priority sites compiled by Western experts, Bush administration and United Nations officials say." [more]

"Iraq is poised to accept the tough new United Nations resolution calling on it to disarm, according to Arab League foreign ministers." [more]

"President Bush expressed confidence today that the United Nations Security Council would pass a resolution on Friday to 'bring the civilized world together to disarm Saddam Hussein.' " [more]

"The Pentagon is moving the jet that fired the opening salvos of the last two U.S. wars to within easy striking distance of Iraq, erecting tent-like portable hangars for the batwinged B-2 bomber on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia." [more]

The third, and probably last official US draft of the resolution on Iraq. [more]

"A Bush administration intelligence review has concluded that four nations — including Iraq and North Korea — possess covert stocks of the smallpox pathogen, according to two officials who received classified briefings, [though] an authoritative official said there is 'no reason' to believe bin Laden succeeded in obtaining the smallpox pathogen." [more]

Saudi Arabia says it will not allow the United States to use its facilities for any attack against neighbouring Iraq, even if a strike was sanctioned by the United Nations. [more]

"Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has said that Iraq will consider a new UN Security Council resolution on disarmament, as long as it does not serve as an excuse for US military action." [more]

"There is still some dispute over the extent of Saddam Hussein's chemical or biological weapons, but one thing beyond dispute is that he has oil. Lots of it. Five times more proven reserves than the United States, the second biggest supply after Saudi Arabia, and more waiting to be found." [more]

"Navy pilots are conducting mock strikes against airfields, towers and other military sites in Iraq in preparation for a possible military campaign." [more]

"He said Saudi Arabia was among countries that supply Iraq with goods such as cooking oil, soap and milk powder under a UN-run oil for food scheme that allows Baghdad to distribute rations to Iraqis burdened by UN sanctions." [more]

"The outgoing prime minister, whose protracted illness led to the collapse of his governing coalition and early elec tions, fears that Turkey's 12 million Kurds, mainly in the south-east, would break away and fragment the country." [more]

Economic sanctions in Iraq as a weapon of mass destruction. [more]

"For weeks, France and the United States have danced a diplomatic tango to define a UN resolution that could precipitate - or forestall - a war with Iraq. " [more]

"Many nations may use next week's expected Security Council vote on US resolution to bridle US might. Picture the Lilliputians pulling ropes, tying knots, doing their best to restrain the giant Gulliver. As a historic vote on Iraq nears at the United Nations, some observers describe what is happening as a similarly Swiftian scene. " [more]

"Emboldened by a weekend antiwar protest in Washington that organizers called the biggest since the days of the Vietnam War, groups opposed to military action in Iraq said they were preparing a wave of new demonstrations across the country in the next few weeks." [more]

"The United States and France are moving toward a compromise on Iraq that would oblige the Bush administration to consult the United Nations Security Council before embarking on military action against Saddam Hussein but still leave it the freedom to act alone." [more]

"The possible compromise follows weeks of intense negotiations. It would allow France to argue that it had secured the right of the Security Council to take a vote, even if it was ignored by the United States." [more]

"Diplomats say that Britain and the United States can count on the support only of Bulgaria, Colombia, Norway and Singapore for its latest proposal. Russia, China, France and Syria do not support the present US-British text. The swing votes are Cameroon, Ireland, Guinea, Mauritius and Mexico." [more]

"President Bush left a summit conference here today without a pledge from Mexico to support the American resolution in the United Nations Security Council to disarm Iraq." [more]

"If President Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the Pentagon has plans to mobilize roughly as many reservists as it did during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when about 265,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves were summoned to active duty, administration officials and military experts say." [more]

"Eli Pariser, 21, who directed international campaigns for MoveOn.org, said the Internet expanded the scope of organizing to people and places that marches can never reach. 'It's a safe and instant way of getting involved,' he said." [more]

"A number of Saturday's marchers also bore placards in memory of Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, the liberal Democrat who died Friday in a plane crash in Minnesota. Wellstone had voted against allowing the Bush administration to use military force in Iraq." [more]

"Several speakers referred to Vietnam era protests, and organizers were eager to compare the current movement with the one that peaked with a rally of between 250,000 and 500,000 people in Washington in 1969. The last large-scale peace protest in Washington was in 1991, when about 75,000 demonstrated during the height of the Persian Gulf War. Unlike those protests, yesterday's rally was different in that it preceded war, and many interpreted that as an indication of a potentially powerful movement." [more]

"Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters circled the White House on Saturday after Jesse Jackson and other speakers denounced the Bush administration's Iraq policies and demanded a revolt at the ballot box to promote peace." [more]

"Hundreds of protesters gathered near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the start of what organizers pledged would be a loud, angry but nonviolent protest against war with Iraq." [more]

"Anti-war activists plan an anti-war referendum as well, with signed petitions and votes via computer on the Web site www.votenowar.org. An additional rally is scheduled in Washington in January followed by a "People's Peace Conference" to be attended by representatives of organizations that are backing the anti-war effort." [more]

" 'The American people are saying there is another conversation to be had, and I would frame this march as a new beginning,' said the Rev. Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ who served six terms in the House as a Pennsylvania Democrat." [more]

"After a month of failing to reach a compromise with veto-wielding France and Russia, the US is now courting Mexico, Ireland, and the other members of the UN Security Council in an effort to win support for a tough Iraq inspection resolution." [more]

"The US has formally proposed its draft resolution aimed at disarming Iraq to the United Nations Security Council." [more]

"IRAN told Washington yesterday that it would never accept an American attempt to impose military rule on Iraq if Saddam Hussein were toppled from power. " [more]

"No event in years has shaken Iraq like the amnesty with which President Saddam Hussein emptied Iraq's jails on Sunday. Within minutes of the broadcast at noon, a crowd began gathering outside Abu Ghraib prison, 20 miles west of Baghdad, the grimmest in a gulag that has incarcerated tens of thousands of political prisoners. Soon, the gates were forced open and the mob stormed the cellblocks, liberating as many as 10,000 captives." [more]

"This document presents military's estimate of U.S. forces now deployed to the Central Command area of operations and focused upon Iraq. It is quite probable that a war may be launched within the next three to six months. Currently, more than over 35,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are in the Persian Gulf area, in over half a dozen countries, and more are arriving. " [more]

A collection of Atlantic articles from 1958 to the present offers a variety of perspectives on this volatile nation and its contentious relationship with the United States - now seems a fitting time to take a considered look at Iraq, and at some of the arguments, both historical and new, on the subject of U.S. involvement there. [more]

"The Bush administration is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the post 2nd World War occupation of Japan and Germany, to install an American-led military government in Iraq. The plan marks the first time the administration has discussed what could be a lengthy occupation of Iraq by coalition forces, led by the United States." [more]

This explores the rationales for "pre-emptive strikes," from Pearl Harbor through the present, and the wars that often resulted. [more]

"Russia rejected the new U.S. draft resolution on Iraq Tuesday, dealing a sharp blow to American efforts to gain U.N. backing for the automatic use of force if weapons inspectors are thwarted by Baghdad." [more]

"The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohamed Atta, the leader in the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials. " [more]

"The Bush team's ridiculous and wildly inflammatory anti-drug ads are still running in heavy rotation. You know the ads: innocent-looking, middle-class teens admitting their culpability for the vicious consequences of the drug trade. 'I helped blow up buildings,' says one doe-eyed youth. " [more]

"The United States says it has circulated a new draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council demanding that Iraq disarm." [more]

"The vote was widely advertised not only as backing for Saddam but as a rebuke to the United States, which has been pressing in the United Nations Security Council for a resolution that would allow a war to topple Saddam." [more]

"As the guns of war are heard along the Euphrates, the sound at home will be of little cloven hooves trotting up to the trough. When it comes to oil consumption, any sacrifice, however small, will be too big." [more]

"Peace groups believe they can still avert a war by convincing politicians that the majority of Americans oppose unilateral action against Iraq. Most polls find that a majority of Americans believe the United Nations should be allowed to try diplomacy first." [more]

"The impasse between the United States and France over military action in Iraq has deepened in recent days after an effort to reach a compromise stalled," while Bush administration officials "said they were trying to foment an uprising in Iraq, a strategy they had dismissed as recently as last spring." [more]

"Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was welcomed back to Middlebury College Sunday with an alumni achievement award and standing ovations inside the college chapel, and large and loud protests outside. " [more]

"Iraq said that it expected UN weapons inspectors to arrive next week. In a letter sent by the Iraqi government to chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix, Baghdad authorities said they were ready to welcome an advance team from October 19." [more]

"A quite distinct sort of claim is also made in the 'double standards' debate. This holds that Israel stands in breach of Security Council resolutions in just the way Iraq does, and therefore deserves to be treated by the UN with equal severity. Not so." [more]

"With a resounding congressional endorsement behind him, President Bush confronts Iraq bolstered by the near-universal consensus that Saddam Hussein poses a security menace to his neighbors and the United States." [more]

"The decision to send the Army and Marine teams follows other steps by the Bush administration in recent weeks also pointing toward heightened preparations for war, including a gradual buildup of military equipment in the Gulf region, training exercises by U.S. troops likely to take part in an invasion and accelerated maintenance of aircraft carriers that could be sent from U.S. ports." [more]

"The heads of more than 60 Christian organizations issued a statement opposing a preemptive war on both moral and practical grounds. They included leaders of Bush's and Blair's own denominations — the United Methodist Church and the Church of England, respectively — as well as other major Protestant groups, Catholic men's and women's orders, humanitarian agencies and seminaries." [more]

"The speed of the antiwar mobilization has struck some longtime college presidents. 'Students are engaging very, very quickly with Iraq,' said Nancy Dye, the president of Oberlin College. 'This morning I was struck by a very large sign on top of an academic building, saying, "Say No to War in Iraq." A new student organization has gotten itself together, and I don't even know if they have a name yet.' " [more]

"College campuses, which served as key incubators for the antiwar protests of previous decades, are spawning a new generation of activists opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq." [more]

"The polls, far from rationalizing the Democrats' timidity, suggest they might have won a real debate had they staged one. Support for an Iraq war is falling, with the dicey 51 percent in favor in the latest CNN/USA Today survey dropping to a Vietnam-like 33 percent support level if there are 5,000 casualties, as there could well be. But even so, the Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration's pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn't patriotism, it's abdication." [more]

"In key ways, the congressional resolution gives Bush even more leeway than his father received after Iraq overran Kuwait and targeted Saudi Arabia's oil facilities in August 1990. The resolution adopted by Congress the following January required the president to inform Congress that diplomacy had failed before he waged war. The current resolution allows Bush to wage war as long as he informs Congress within 48 hours after the onset of military action." [more]

"The Democrats who voted in surprising numbers not to authorize military action in Iraq needed some encouragement to withstand the majority's tide, and they found it today in a loose coalition of colleagues whose makeup transcended obvious patterns. [One representative] having agonized over her decision until a few hours before the vote, said she was persuaded by a large number of calls and e-mail messages from voters who were deeply uneasy about the prospect of a new war that could be fought with terrible weapons." [more]

The Senate voted overwhelmingly early this morning to authorize President Bush to use force against Iraq, joining with the House in giving him a broad mandate to act against Saddam Hussein. [more]

This article gives a brief history of Saddam's rise to power as well as an overview of key political figures in Iraq. [more]

"The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein, senior administration officials said today." [more]

NPR's full coverage of the events during and leading up to the Congressional debate over a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. [more]

"The various presidents had to deal with the Soviets. They had 50,000 nuclear warheads, and they had tremendous power, and they brought them 90 miles off our shore. And not once did we think that confrontation was a good idea." [more]

"Despite a media blackout, a nascent US peace movement has gradually been gathering momentum. In September, at least 300 peace events were being held weekly in cities from Pensacola to Fairbanks. Organizers say they're attracting many who oppose the war in Iraq but were ambivalent about, or supported, war in Afghanistan." [more]

"Polls signal that a majority of the public still supports the possibility of an invasion of Iraq — but that support drops significantly if the US goes in alone. If casualties reach 5,000, most Americans would oppose the war, [and] that concern gives Democrats an opening to back force, yet distance themselves from the president by insisting on the need to build coalitions." [more]

"For months, whenever President Bush spoke of "regime change" in Iraq, the assumption was he meant Saddam Hussein had to go. Now, Mr. Bush is signaling he could accept a world where Mr. Hussein — though a fully disarmed Hussein — remains the man in charge in Iraq." [more]

"A letter to Congress from the director of central intelligence has brought into public view divisions within the administration over what intelligence shows about Iraq's intentions and its willingness to ally itself with Al Qaeda." [more]

"I have heard from tens of thousands of Americans — people from all across this country of ours — who have urged me to keep up the fight. I am only one Senator from a small state, yet in the past week I have received nearly 20,000 telephone calls and nearly 50,000 e-mails supporting my position. I want all of those people across America who took the time to contact me to know how their words have heartened me and sustained me in my efforts to turn the tide of opinion in the Senate. They are my heroes, and I will never forget the remarkable courage and patriotism that reverberated in the fervor of their messages." [more]

"A sudden appetite for war with Iraq seems to have consumed the Bush administration and Congress. The debate that began in the Senate last week is centered not on the fundamental and monumental questions of whether and why the United States should go to war with Iraq, but rather on the mechanics of how best to wordsmith the president's use-of-force resolution in order to give him virtually unchecked authority to commit the nation's military to an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation." [more]

" 'Our liberal base wants us to stand up and challenge Bush on the war,' said Donna Brazile, who runs the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute. She said loyal Democrats in low-income areas and black neighborhoods, along with many women and liberal suburbanites, are bitterly complaining that 'no one is talking to us, no one is addressing our issues' on the economy and preparation for war." [more]

"The House of Representatives approved Bush war powers — the step will let Bush unilaterally declare war on Iraq. It also stipulates that he reports to Congress every 60 days if he does take action." [more]

Bringing the United States a step closer to the possibility of war, the House voted 296 to 133 this afternoon to give President Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq. Earlier in the day, the Senate voted, 75 to 25, to limit debate on the resolution, meaning a vote could come as early as this evening or by early Friday. [more]

"The former commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf spoke out on Thursday against attacking Iraq, saying a policy of containment would work and Washington had at least five higher priorities in the Middle East." [more]

"Behind the blizzard of claims and counterclaims of the last two months — about whether Iraq has nuclear weapons; about whether United Nations inspectors should be trusted to uncover them; about whether America should heed the views of allies or the international community at all — a more important and subtler drama is being played, about the character of American power and its proper role in the world." [more]

"President Bush's case against Saddam Hussein relied on a slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government officials and analysts claimed yesterday. Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned." [more]

"As the US gears up to expand Washington's 'war on terror' to Iraq, a series of fresh attacks against US forces — even in nations where the majority support the US presence — underscores the risk to growing US military deployments." [more]

"Religious leaders began another phase of an anti-war lobbying effort on Capitol Hill Wednesday, urging Congress to explore peaceful alternatives in its dealings with Iraq." [more]

"This war, sold as necessary to safeguard Americans from terror, has as much potential to make the world less safe for Americans as it does to protect them." [more]

"Iraq's Tariq Aziz has warned other Arab states that no country in the region will escape unscathed in the event of war with America. " [more]

"As Congress moves this week toward giving President Bush the authority he seeks to make war on Iraq, some of the toughest questions are coming from lawmakers who once were warriors." [more]

"The current debate about war should address not only whether we go to war but also why: If and when we invade, we should do so not because we deem it justifiable but because we can show that it is just." [more]

In addition to protests on Sunday, a Saturday gathering in Seattle was greeted by Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector. [more]

"The demonstrations, held on Sunday, the anniversary of the commencement of bombing in Afghanistan, marked the start of what is intended to be a series of actions to mobilise public opinion against American troops being deployed against Saddam Hussein." [more]

"With Congress on the verge of approving the use of force against Iraq, anti-war activists around the country are struggling to generate fervor for peace." [more]

"Indeed, in this era of low voter turnout and the Supreme Court arbitrating the 2000 election, there's less '60s-style, make-love-not-war idealism, observers say. Many students 'feel a great deal of alienation from the political process,' says Jeffrey Murer, a political scientist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania." [more]

"Members of local peace organizations protested Monday against U.S. involvement in an attack against Iraq. Their message seemed clear: diplomacy over violence." [more]

"Echoes of the Vietnam War era, right down to the music that was performed, reverberated Monday at the entrance to Black Hawk College as about 100 people gathered to protest the possibility of war against Iraq." [more]

"In a sign of growing opposition in the academic world to potential war with Iraq, more than 1,000 students and professors at local colleges spoke out yesterday at rallies, panels, and marches, vowing to step up opposition to a preemptive strike against Iraq." [more]

"Again daring to go where few of his colleagues venture, Kennedy defined all of this by its proper name: 'The administration's doctrine is a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.' The debate in Congress this week is centered on Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but what is really at stake are basic structures of the American idea." [more]

"The situation involving Coleman and Wellstone is similar. The obvious judgment of the Coleman campaign is that Minnesota's electorate is interested above all in supporting Bush on the impending war with no ifs or questions." [more]

Gestures of solidarity from onlookers "seemed to reinforce what some of those gathered believe — that support for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq ... does not run as deep throughout the country as many of the polls suggest." [more]

"Iraq's fragmented society and blood-soaked political history should make anyone wary of predicting the swift creation of a viable democracy there. The U.S. establishment does not seem to appreciate how deeply entrenched are sectarian, tribal and ethnic loyalties and how complex would be the job of reconnecting Iraqi communities, estranged from one another by decades of divisive official policies." [more]

" 'Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist action,' the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, continued. He noted that Mr. Hussein could use either conventional terrorism or a weapon of mass destruction as 'his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.' " [more]

"Saddam Hussein's regime 'is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents,' Vice President Dick Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August, adding, 'These are not weapons designed for the purpose of defending Iraq. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale.' Billed by the White House as laying out the case for military action against Iraq, the speech employed the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction' eight times. George W. Bush also regularly uses 'weapons of mass destruction' as a collective term for chemical, biological, and atomic arms. In his 2002 State of the Union address, for example, the president stated that the United States would not 'permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons,' citing chemical, biological, and atomic arms as equal concerns." [more]

"Is he tough enough to make Iraq comply with arms inspections?" [more]

"Bush is probably not acting out of pure self-defense in threatening Iraq. Rather he may honestly believe in a new kind of liberal internationalism that would build on what Woodrow Wilson proposed after World War I. If so, he'll have to find the right kind of moral allies that he now seems unable to find at the UN." [more]

"Those old enough to know said that yesterday's Central Park rally to protest a United States invasion of Iraq drew a larger crowd than similar gatherings in the early 1960's by those who did not want the United States to get further involved in Vietnam." Includes a picture of Why War? activist Mary Harrison in the foreground holding a sign reading "I Love Peace." [more]

An in-depth independent summary of the Central Park Not In Our Name rally. [more]

The rally in New York "was one of more than 25 rallies organised by the Not In Our Name group to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan." [more]

"Protest organizers said President Bush, motivated by a thirst for power and control of oil reserves, was lying to the country about the need for an attack on Iraq and the war against terrorism. Iraq's oil reserves are the second biggest in the world after Saudi Arabia's." [more]

"For more than four hours, protesters filled the East Meadow to question why the U.S. should use force to oust Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein — and to rail against the American worldwide offensive against terrorism." [more]

"Protesters in such cities as New York, San Franciso and Los Angeles chanted slogans and held up placards bearing slogans such as 'Change the US administration, not Iraq's.' " [more]

" 'I have such a horror that this is going to go on and on,' said Mabel Dudeney, 76, a survivor of the 1940–41 Battle of Britain in which much of London was destroyed by nightly German bombing. 'Russia is going to go into Georgia. China is going to attack Taiwan. Israel and the Palestinians are going to continue fighting...War settles nothing.' " [more]

"LA police officials said the demonstration there was the largest so far against Washington's Iraq policy. In downtown San Francisco, some 5,000 people protested in the city's Union Square area." [more]

"Anti-war fever awoke over the weekend, as about 8,000 protesters in San Francisco joined brethren across the country in a rising rumble against President Bush's drive to disarm Iraq. Galvanized by Bush's push for military intervention, anti-war sentiment re-emerged Sunday into blazing sunshine and cacophony at Union Square." [more]

"A diverse pack of students marched from People's Park down Telegraph and Shattuck avenues chanting "No war on Iraq! Let's have a peace talk!" and hoisting signs to the beat of drums before moving across the bay." [more]

"During the rally, Union Square was filled with chanting, energetic crowds who spilled over into neighboring streets. People crammed the windows overlooking the rally from the neighboring Macy’s, some of them just curious, others dangling an anti-war banner from the roof until they were told by police to remove it." [more]

"Thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets throughout the state Sunday, beating drums, hoisting signs and proclaiming their opposition to the war with Iraq." [more]

"Both sides parted on good terms. After nearly an hour of debate, education and analysis over state of world since before and after 9/11, one of the disgruntled men parted with 'Thanks man, I'm really glad I stopped by. You know, I've never really thought about it like that...' This seemed to be a sentiment shared by many of his compatriots." [more]

"As the Bush administration whipped up the anti-Saddam Hussein war rhetoric, the opinion polls in the United States are telling the Republican administration that they don't want any preemptive strike against Iraq." [more]

"As President George W. Bush prepared to address the nation tonight about Iraq, as many as 15,000 anti-war demononstrators filled Central Park's East Meadow yesterday to stage a four-hour rally." [more]

"U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, recently back from Baghdad, told about 5,000-plus peace activists at a rally Sunday that President Bush is out for blood in Iraq and it will take their efforts to stop him." [more]

"For Seattle area Congressman Jim McDermott, the reaction he got at yesterday's anti-war protest in his home district was a welcome change from the criticism he's attracted in recent days." [more]

"Longtime peace activists hope the U.S. government's steps toward military action in Iraq will help galvanize a resistance movement in Seattle and focus scattered groups that have been working on everything from banning landmines to nuclear issues to curbing police brutality." [more]

"U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott broadened his attack on George W. Bush's war plans yesterday, saying the president is threatening military action in Iraq as part of a plot to crown himself emperor of America." [more]

"In front of the base's Dale Mabry Highway entrance, 80 protesters gathered to show displeasure with possible action against Iraq. A large mid-air refueling jet took off from MacDill's runway a few hundred yards away, its four engines creating a deafening, ground-shaking roar." [more]

"The media, some of which appear to be actually lusting for conflict and the ratings it will bring, is more focused on the drums of war instead of the chants of peace. In Washington, cable networks keep up an incessant chatter about the need and the rationale for punishing Iraq." [more]

"The timing of the war, he acknowledged, was bad. The value of his stock portfolio has plummeted. 'But you can't really have wars when they are convenient,' he said." [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]

"Hollywood, which banded together after Sept. 11 to raise funds, flags and patriotic fervor, is mobilizing an anti-war front to protest President Bush's plans for an attack on Iraq." [more]

" 'It's great to see a public debate on such a critical issue,' [Martin] Sheen said, adding that 40 years ago the then President John Kennedy used diplomacy to prevent the Cuban missile crisis sparking a war." [more]

"A rally of people against war filled Chicago’s biggest downtown streetside venue for public events today and overflowed into a parade that shut down six blocks of Michigan Avenue’s "miracle mile." The Sunday rally was the second big protest recently against the Bush Administration’s foreign policy." [more]

"Activists joined the Western New York Peace Center and U.S. Representative John LaFalce in questioning the war posture that the Bush administration is taking us." [more]

"Russia, France and China are not in principle against a more practical wording of a new Resolution but oppose the use of any expression threatening the use of force. The purpose of the United Nations and its Security Council is to avoid conflict through non-aggressive actions and dialogue. The use of any words threatening use of force is not only unnecessary but goes against the grain of good diplomacy, entering instead the primary realm of bullying and muscle-flexing." [more]

"How tempting it must look for Bush and his political managers! Amid the war cries against Saddam they could stage a reprise of Reagan's onslaught on the air traffic controllers, with Bush waving the flag and deriding the longshoremen as Al Qaeda's auxiliaries, overpaid and bent on resisting modern technology that could fortify America's competitiveness on the battleground of world trade." [more]

"Ramadan, wearing a green uniform and a black beret, made his remarks without giving any outward sign that he was joking although reporters who were present detected a note of irony in his voice." [more]

"A movement is growing to stop the country from going to war. It needs to be an inclusive citizens' movement that looks beyond the reach of existing peace and anti-war organizations. What's needed is a commitment to civility and persuasion, a reaching out to all citizens no matter where they stand on other issues." [more]

"President Bush yesterday rejected congressional efforts to limit his options to confront Iraq, part of what is shaping up as a successful though contentious campaign to win unfettered power from lawmakers to strike Saddam Hussein." [more]

"Behind the increasingly vocal worldwide warnings about an invasion of Iraq lies not so much a resurgent peace movement as a fear America will try to depose Saddam Hussein alone. If Washington waits for United Nations approval for an attack, opinion polls in many countries show that American troops would actually enjoy considerable international public support." [more]

" 'It's extraordinary that, as Senators work with the Bush Administration to draft a war resolution, their constituents are expressing overwhelming opposition an attack against Iraq,' said Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! 'Unfortunately we are hearing very little about this in the media. These calls represent the silenced majority, not the silent majority.' " [more]

"Iraq and the United Nations agreed today that inspectors would be given unfettered access to a range of sites, including sensitive areas like the Defense Ministry and the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard." [more]

"UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix said [an] agreement had been reached on practical arrangements for inspections, with unconditional and unrestricted access to Iraqi sites." [more]

"U.S. retaliation has increased in severity and frequency in recent weeks, drawing criticism yesterday from Russia's Foreign Ministry. In a statement, the ministry charged that the stepped-up bombing runs were making it harder to forge a political and diplomatic solution to prevent war." [more]

"The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus." [more]

" 'The Iraqi people themselves with the pressure of the world behind them must depose Saddam Hussein — not us with bombs,' [Eileen Sinclair] said." [more]

"Yet along with the rapidly growing union opposition to war comes a disconcerting non-position to war. The AFL-CIO Executive Council is refusing to take a stand on the topic of Iraq. Their silence on the 'war on terrorism' leaves a gaping whole that local unions are starting to fill. The national labor leadership's silence represents a lack of opposition to Bush's war plans. They might as well be shouting labor's approval of the Bush Administration. Yet all is not lost. Perhaps now that local unions are speaking out against a possible war on Iraq, the national leaders will be brave enough to add their voices to the anti-war movement by following their rank and file members." [more]

"Why now? Why, one year after September 11, is the Bush Administration attempting to overthrow decades of precedents and precepts of international law, along with the best traditions of US foreign policy, in a relentless push to war? As high-level officials try to sell the Administration's case to the American people and the President preparesfor an appearance before the UN General Assembly, the White House continues its attempt to restrict the debate on Iraq to details of timing and tactics while ignoring the basic question of whether an invasion of Iraq should be considered at all. " [more]

"Democratic congressmen who are visiting Iraq this week stirred up anger among some Republicans when they questioned the reasons President Bush has used to justify possible military action against Iraq." [more]

"Saddam Hussein has been a familiar name since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But as the United States again weighs the prospect of war with Iraq, the question of what to call the Iraqi president is becoming a bit of a media quandary." [more]

"Lawmakers have yet to settle differences about the threat posed by Iraq and how to confront it, despite White House hopes Congress soon will pass a resolution authorizing military force to topple Saddam Hussein." [more]

"Russia has condemned recent US and British air strikes in Iraq's air exclusion zones, saying they hinder efforts to resolve the weapons inspections crisis." [more]

The announcement ended days of speculation that the substance might have been destined for neighboring Iraq, which the United States accuses of trying to smuggle in nuclear material for a secret weapons program. [more]

"The desire to rush to war glides over the tremendous costs and risks involved, including the dangers for American servicemen and women and for Iraqi civilians, as well as the potential destabilization of the Middle East. War would likely derail any chance at a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, while trampling international law and U.N. principles and setting a terrible international precedent. It would also sidetrack efforts to prevent terrorism. Moreover, it would divert some $200 billion from our own profound domestic needs, including health care, prescription drugs, education and homeland security." [more]

"Iraq is a war of choice, not a war of no choice, and it is a war of choice that will require a lot of nation-building if it is to produce a more peaceful Iraq. If the Bush team can enlist the backing of the U.N. and key allies, there is a real chance that such an operation can be successful. If the U.S. can't do that, it should keep Saddam in his box through deterrence and wait for a better strategic environment. Because launching a war of choice in Iraq, with an ambivalent U.S. public and no allies, could make for a frustrating, dangerous and endless Day 3." [more]

"The newsletter said the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit was ordered into Iraq 'to find and identify places used by, or likely to be used by, Iraqi Scud missile launchers.' " [more]

"The only reason — the only reason — that Congressional Democrats this past week started speaking out against invasion, in more than their previously token numbers, is because they have been deluged with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails expressing the public's opposition. Polls show widespread doubt. Congressional office intake valves, a measure of the people passionate enough to contact their public officials, has been running more than 90 percent against the planned invasion. And volume has been high." [more]

"Would you favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule? / Overall ?64 percent favor, but that drops to 33 percent if the United States must act without allies." [more]

"Political opponents of many Middle Eastern governments may try to exploit the upcoming U.S. war with Iraq in an effort to challenge the current ruling regimes. Many governments in the region already are dealing with hostile opposition ranging from Islamists to wealthy elites who will jump eagerly on the issue of cooperation with Washington." [more]

"A Pentagon official said two strikes early Thursday were in response to Iraq's firing anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at allied aircraft patrolling zones declared off-limits to Iraqi planes." [more]

"Dozens of congressional Democrats are frustrated with their leadership for rushing to embrace President Bush's Iraqi war resolution and fostering an impression the party overwhelmingly backs a unilateral strike against Saddam Hussein." [more]

"Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States on Wednesday, declaring that Rome had a duty to support U.S. diplomatic and military efforts to disarm Iraq. " [more]

"While the global energy picture has changed much since 1990, one thing is certain: Once it becomes apparent that Washington will settle for nothing less than the ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, oil prices will spike." [more]

"After scores of studies costing more than $150 million, a definitive cause for Gulf War Illness has yet to be announced. Investigators and researchers have targeted a number of things, including: the unproven vaccines and drugs our troops were forced to take; the U.S. Depleted Uranium Munitions used against Iraqi armor that exposed our soldiers to radiation; pollution from the oil-well fires; local diseases; even the clouds that blew over our troops when captured Iraqi chemical-warfare weaponry was destroyed by Army engineers." [more]

"The Bush administration's goal of regime change is the equivalent of our World War II aim of unconditional surrender, and it would have similar postwar consequences. We would assume total responsibility for Iraq's territorial integrity, for the security and basic needs of its population, and for the reconstruction of its system of governance and political culture. This would require an occupation measured in years or even decades." [more]

"It is far from clear that America will be able to control the next leader of Iraq, even if he is not as diabolical as Saddam. Any leader of Iraq will look around him and see that Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and that Iran may soon. Just as England and France opted to build their own bombs in the cold war, and not depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, the next president of Iraq may want to have his own bomb." [more]

"Mobilizing for a possible attack on Iraq, American commanders have taken many steps to prepare and deploy their forces, Defense Department and military officials say. But the early steps have been calculated not to interfere with the Bush administration's campaign to build diplomatic and political support for taking action." [more]

"rominent members of the U.S. Congress warned on Sunday that a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq could draw in Israel and lead to a wider Middle East war." [more]

"A new study by the Army's Center of Military History has found that the U.S. military would have to commit 300,000 peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan and 100,000 in Iraq if it were to occupy and reconstruct those nations on the scale that occurred in Japan and Germany after World War II." [more]

"It is suddenly de rigueur for US officials to say, 'Saddam Hussein gassed his own people.' They are evidently referring to the Iraqi military's use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August. " [more]

"One of Iraq's most senior defectors has told the BBC that an American-led invasion would spell a 'very dark future for all'. " [more]

"Israel has seriously disrupted United States planning for war with Iraq by incensing Arabs with its new humiliation of Yasser Arafat and defiantly vowing to respond militarily to any Baghdad attack on its soil." [more]

"Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., said President Bush's plans to invade Iraq are a conscious effort to distract public attention from growing problems at home." [more]

"As Congress confronts the prospect of war, it should consider some constitutional fundamentals. The Bush administration would have us believe that international law contains only ambiguous or advisory requirements. In fact, the United Nations Charter was ratified as a treaty by the Senate after World War II, and the Constitution explicitly makes all treaties 'the supreme law of the land.' " [more]

"Recently, I've had the chance to travel around the country and do some call-in radio shows, during which the question of Iraq has come up often. And here's what I can report from a totally unscientific sample: Don't believe the polls that a majority of Americans favor a military strike against Iraq. It's just not true." [more]

"The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, better known by the acronym Unmovic, was created in December 1999. It inherited the mandate of the United Nations Special Commission, known as Unscom, which the Security Council inaugurated at the close of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to disarm Iraq of chemical and biological weapons and missiles with a range of more than about 100 miles, and to ensure that Iraq not reacquire such weapons." [more]

An in-depth examination of the arguments for war as counterbalanced by the cost in human lives and the long-term possibly disastrous consequences of nation-building in a land ravaged by decades of war, oppression, ethnic strife and miserable poverty. [more]

"Unmovic now has a roster of 220 trained inspectors from 44 countries – including Steven Hatfill, the former US government researcher whose home has been searched repeatedly by the FBI in connection with the investigation into last year’s anthrax attacks." [more]

"Russia and the United States clashed openly on Tuesday about whether to hold Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's feet to the fire in a new U.N. Security Council resolution before weapons inspectors return." [more]