Year: 2004

The United States is stopping secret payments to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, finding that the information it has provided is useless.

The monthly payments of $335,000 dollars made through the Defence Intelligence Agency began in 2002.

They will end 30 June, when the scheduled “transfer of power” from US-led occupying forces to an Iraqi government takes place, an official with Chalabi’s group told the New York Times on Tuesday.

Totalling at least $27 million, the classified programme helped the INC gather intelligence in Iraq, but internal reviews by the US government have found that much of the information provided before the US-led invasion last year was useless, misleading or fabricated.

[Source: Al Jazeera]

So finally, the US have realized that Chalabi has been lying to them and pulling their leg all along for his own benefit.
It just makes me think where the word “Intelligence” comes from in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

U.S. forces beat three Iraqi reporters working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said on Tuesday.

The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said on Tuesday.

Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anuses and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths.

All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse.

The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused. Yeah Right!

[Source: Reuters]

Al Hurra, the Pentagon funded US propaganda channel targeted at Arabs will broadcast photos and video of Saddam-era atrocities!

These should make all Americans feel better about their torture chambers, and the Arabs should realize once and for all that they have no claim to human rights. They should realize that if it weren’t for the Americans coming to free them, their tortures would be these heavy-duty Saddam tortures, not that frat hazing the Americans do.

[Via Je Blog, Unfair Witness]

Terek Dergoul, one of the five British prisoners released from Guantanamo last March, said American guards digitally recorded the beatings and abuses.

He told the Observer newspaper of one assault by a five-man team of Extreme Reaction Force (ERF), saying “they pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting.”

“They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes and forced my head down the toilet pan and flushed,” he said, speaking for the first time about his ordeal in Guantanamo Bay.

“They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching.”

“Finally, they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the recreation yard and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows,” he said.

“There was always a guy behind the ERF squad, filming what was going on,” he added.

[Source: Al Jazeera]

These tapes must be checked and these animals have to be punished for their crimes against humanity.

So there’s a big fuss over what Yasser Arafat said on Saturday calling on his people to “terrorize your enemy” as he bitterly marked the 56-year anniversary of Israel’s establishment.

Media are saying that he ended the speech with a quote from the Quran.
“Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God”

But what that verse from the Quran essentially says is:
“When your enemies come up against you, show them you are prepared to fight with absolutely everything you can muster, in the hope that this will frighten them off. But if they’re willing to make peace, you must make peace with them”

This verse describes how the faithful should respond to the pagan armies threatening to wipe out the nascent Muslim community in Medina.
And nowadays it’s interpreted as an exhortation for them to remain strong under difficult circumstances

So what Arafat is actually saying is that Palestinians should not break under the current events and that they should show that they are strong and will not be stamped on, but that if there is a change of heart on the other side and they want peace, then they should work towards that peace.

Very big difference!
And a very legitimate thing to say, which is consistent with Arafat’s position and the position of most Palestinians.

So basically, the media and Mr. Powell should check their facts before opening up their mouths!

[More: Lawrence of Cyberia]

Massachusetts becomes the first state in the U.S. to make it legal for same-sex couples to marry. It follows a highly controversial decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, striking down the heterosexuals-only restriction in the state’s marriage law.

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of people broke into cheers as city clerks in Cambridge issued the first marriage license applications to to gay and lesbian couples.

Several dozen couples lined up outside City Hall in the rain early Sunday to be called into a basement corridor to declare their intention to marry.

As I said before, no one and nothing will be able to hold Gay marriage back in the U.S., simply because if you start giving gay people the same rights as straight people, you have to go all the way and allow them all the rights.

Massachusetts is the first state to allow Gay marriage, but it won’t be the last. The rest of the U.S. will surely follow.

This is just another one of those low points in Human history.

An article in The New Yorker Magazine says that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and one of his top aides authorized the expansion of a secret program that permitted harsh interrogations of detained members of Al Qaeda to be used against prisoners in Iraq, including detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

The article, to be published in the May 24 edition of The New Yorker, said that the expansion of the “special access program” allowed authorities in charge of Abu Ghraib to engage in degrading and humiliating practices.

The article said, “According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.”

The clandestine Defence Department operation was known as a Special Access Program (SAP).
Its rules were: “Grab whom you must. Do what you want,” according to one former intelligence official cited by Hersh.

The US defence secretary’s decision to import such techniques into Iraq, after their use in Afghanistan, was opposed by members of US intelligence organisations, the report said.

The report goes on to say that Rumsfeld left the detailed planning to Pentagon intelligence chief Steve Cambone, but that the programme was ultimately approved by Rumsfeld and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s decision in the matter had, in effect, shifted the blame for the abuses from himself to lower-level military guards.

I truly think Rumsfeld should be kicked out.
He’s a liar and I don’t believe he didn’t know about what was happening in the prisons. It’s obvious he authorized all that abuse.

[More: NY Times, News24]

So, it seems like the UK prisoner abuse photos were a hoax.

UK armed forces minister Adam Ingram said an inquiry by military police found a truck seen in the Mirror’s photos “was never in Iraq.”

The tabloid newspaper issued a statement on Friday afternoon apologizing for printing the pictures, saying it believed it had been “the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax.”

The paper, which has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, also said it “deeply regrets the reputational damage” done to British forces.

Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has stepped down after admitting the error.

Still, the scandal of the faked photos does not mean the question of abuse by British troops is over; there is simply no photographic evidence of it.
Ministers are not saying there has been no abuse as a Red Cross report is still being investigated.

[More: CNN, Manchester Online]