contributions

In an explosive extract from his new book, Seymour Hersh reveals how, in a fateful decision that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the US defence secretary gave the green light to a secret unit authorised to torture terrorist suspects
by Seymour Hersh
In the late summer of 2002, a CIA analyst made a quiet visit to the detention centre at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where an estimated 600 prisoners were being held, many, at first, in steel-mesh cages that provided (…)

Journalist Mazen Tumeisi is seen falling and his blood covers the lens
by Martin Asser
Sunday’s bloody events on Baghdad’s Haifa Street came amid some of the fiercest fighting for months in the centre of the Iraqi capital.
But though they were captured by television cameras, two very different accounts have emerged about what happened.
At least 13 people were killed and about 60 others were wounded by US helicopter fire as they milled around the burning wreckage of an American (…)

by Oliver Burkeman
Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today.
The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would "fuck with [detainees] as much as (…)

by Eileen McNamara
NEW LONDON, N.H. — Hilary Cleveland felt a tad the traitor on Friday evening, as she prepared to toss fruit in the porcelain bowl from China that was a gift from Barbara and George H.W. Bush. Hours before, she had taken the helm of the GOP Women for Kerry Steering Committee in this battleground state.
In truth, she left the Republican Party months ago, her opposition to the war in Iraq prompting her to change her lifelong political affiliation from Republican to (…)

By Patrick Cockburn
The US military assault on Tal Afar, an ethnically Turkmen city in northern Iraq, has provoked a furious reaction from the Turkish government which is demanding the US call off the attack.
American and Iraqi government forces last week sealed off Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul belonging to Iraq’s embattled Turkmen minority. The US said it killed 67 insurgents while a Turkmen leader claims 60 civilians were killed and 100 wounded. The massive and indiscriminate use of (…)

by Greg Palast
On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, "were told to back off the Saudis."
We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, "SECRET" across the top and "199-I" - meaning this (…)

The growing antiwar movement within the AFL-CIO took another leap forward in the past two weeks when three major unions passed strong resolutions at their recent conventions, opposing the U.S. war in Iraq and calling for an end to the American occupation. They are Communications Workers of America (650,000 members), American Postal Workers Union (270,000) and Mail Handlers of the Laborers’ International Union (50,000).
They join the Service Employees International Union (1,6 million) (…)

by Tiana Thi Thanh Nga
Vietnam is a country, not a war. Our people have survived foreign invasions for thousands of years. With all these charges and counter charges on the Swift Boat Race, let’s have some understanding for the Vietnamese who gave so much for their independence and reunification. To lance our wounds, we have to examine and reconcile with the past, so all sides can participate in a healing that has only just BEGUN.
John F. Kerry earned my deep gratitude when he (…)

by John B. Judis
When U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, some American policymakers were unprepared for the intensity of the resistance that ensued. John Judis’ latest book, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, finds the postwar developments in Iraq entirely unsurprising.
Judis, senior editor for The New Republic offers a survey of U.S. foreign policy since the late 19th century — and finds that the Bush administration (…)

TENS of thousands of people joined in a torchlit procession through the Italian capital overnight to call for the release of two women aid workers held hostage in Iraq.
The march came as the Italian Government said it was prepared to lobby for the release of any prisoners being held unfairly in Iraq - an apparent bid to meet a purported ultimatum set by the kidnappers.
Children and adults marched in silence under rainbow-coloured banners and slogans calling for peace in Iraq. (…)