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550 Women and Children Found Dead in Fallujah
IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005
Source: REUTERS
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d85.htm
FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN.
According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly.
Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according to a specialist at the hospital.
Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighbourhoods...
He explained that many of the dead had been already buried... and those bodies had not been counted.
IRCS officials told IRIN they needed more time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely uninhabitable.
Iraqi insurgents outnumber U.S. forces - (United Press International)
Iraqi insurgents outnumber U.S. forces - (United Press International): "Iraqi insurgents outnumber U.S. forces
Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Iraq's director of intelligence says there are now more Arabic insurgents in Iraq than there are U.S.-led coalition soldiers, The Times of London said Tuesday.
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'I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,' said Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq's new intelligence services.
Shahwani said there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking U.S. and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money.
'People are fed up after two years without improvement,' he said. 'People are fed up with no security, no electricity -- people feel they have to do something.'"
A Guide to the Memos on Torture
A Guide to the Memos on Torture
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
(To see the actual memos, follow the links here - http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html?oref=login&oref=login )
The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have disclosed memorandums that show a pattern in which Bush administration lawyers set about devising arguments to avoid constraints against mistreatment and torture of detainees. Administration officials responded by releasing hundreds of pages of previously classified documents related to the development of a policy on detainees.
2002
JANUARY A series of memorandums from the Justice Department, many of them written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. The memorandums, principally one written on Jan. 9, provided legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the war in Afghanistan.
RELATED SITES
• Yoo's Memo on Avoiding Geneva Conventions (PDF document)
Gonzales
JAN. 25 Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice in the Jan. 9 memorandum was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law that carries the death penalty.
RELATED SITES
• Gonzales's Memo to Bush (PDF document)
Powell
JAN. 26 In a memorandum to the White House, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the advantages of applying the Geneva Conventions far outweighed their rejection. He said that declaring the conventions inapplicable would "reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the laws of war for our troops." He also said it would "undermine public support among critical allies."
RELATED SITES
• Powell's Memo to White House (PDF document)
FEB. 2 A memorandum from William H. Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, to Mr. Gonzales warned that the broad rejection of the Geneva Conventions posed several problems. "A decision that the conventions do not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan in which our armed forces are engaged deprives our troops there of any claim to the protection of the conventions in the event they are captured." An attachment to this memorandum, written by a State Department lawyer, showed that most of the administration's senior lawyers agreed that the Geneva Conventions were inapplicable. The attachment noted that C.I.A. lawyers asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.
RELATED
• Taft's Memo on Rejection of Geneva Conventions (PDF document)
FEB. 7 In a directive that set new rules for handling prisoners captured in Afghanistan, President Bush broadly cited the need for "new thinking in the law of war." He ordered that all people detained as part of the fight against terrorism should be treated humanely even if the United States considered them not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions, the White House said. Document released by White House.
RELATED SITES
• Bush's Directive on Treatment of Detainees (PDF document)
Bybee
AUGUST A memorandum from Jay S. Bybee, with the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, provided a rationale for using torture to extract information from Qaeda operatives. It provided complex definitions of torture that seemed devised to allow interrogators to evade being charged with that offense.
RELATED SITES
• Justice Dept. Memo on Torture (PDF document)
• Letter by Author of Memo on Torture to White House Counsel
Dec. 2 Memo from Defense Department detailing the policy for interrogation techniques to be used for people seized in Afghanistan. Document released by White House.
RELATED SITES
• Defense Dept. Memo on Afghanistan Detainees (PDF document)
2003
MARCH A memorandum prepared by a Defense Department legal task force drew on the January and August memorandums to declare that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security. The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.'
APRIL A memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill outlined 24 permitted interrogation techniques, 4 of which were considered stressful enough to require Mr. Rumsfeld's explicit approval. Defense Department officials say it did not refer to the legal analysis of the month before.
RELATED SITES
• Rumsfeld's Memo on Interrogation Techniques (PDF document)
DEC. 24 A letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross over the signature of Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was prepared by military lawyers. The letter, a response to the Red Cross's concern about conditions at Abu Ghraib, contended that isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their significant intelligence value was a "military necessity," and said prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.
Other Memorandums
Some have been described in reports in The Times and elsewhere, but their exact contents have not been disclosed. These include a memorandum that provided advice to interrogators to shield them from liability from the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty and the Anti-Torture Act, a federal law. This memorandum provided what has been described as a script in which officials were advised that they could avoid responsibility if they were able to plausibly contend that the prisoner was in the custody of another government and that the United States officials were just getting the information from the other country's interrogation. The memorandum advised that for this to work, the United States officials must be able to contend that the prisoner was always in the other country's custody and had not been transferred there. International law prohibits the "rendition" of prisoners to countries if the possibility of mistreatment can be anticipated.
Neil A. Lewis contributed to this report. Online Document Sources: Findlaw.com and National Security Archive, George Washington University (gwu.edu)
Reuters AlertNet - IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
Reuters AlertNet - IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say: "IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say
04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks
FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - 'It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started,' Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN."
..............
"The US troops are saying that soon Fallujah will be rebuilt. I believe that this city won't offer a minimum of living conditions until another year has passed. I am still searching for what they have been calling democracy," Muhammad Kubaissy, a civilian from Fallujah, told IRIN. His home and two shops were destroyed in the fighting.
"They came to bring us freedom, but all Iraqis are now prisoners in their own homes," he added.
"It is impossible to live in Fallujah. There is no water, electricity or sewage treatment. Even hospitals cannot afford the minimum of security for all families of the city. We don't have enough medicine and you can feel the bad smell of bodies in the air," al-Iyssaue added.
Residents of Fallujah have been asking the Iraqi government to allow journalists and TV reporters to enter the city in order to show the reality.
The government will only allow journalists to visit with a special identity card, saying it is for their own safety. Many journalists have been turned away from Fallujah after not receiving authorisation from US-troops guarding the city.
Democratic Underground Forums - White House may want $100 billion more for war
Democratic Underground Forums - White House may want $100 billion more for war: "White House may want $100 billion more for war
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-costs04.htm...
WASHINGTON -- Congress expects a new White House request for as much as $100 billion this year for war and related costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional officials say.
It would be the third and largest Iraq-related request from the White House yet, and could push the cost of the Iraq war over $200 billion -- far above the initial White House estimates of $50 billion-$60 billion. So far, the Iraq war has cost about $130 billion, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
War costs complicate President Bush's plans for initiatives such as overhauling Social Security. They also threaten his pledge to halve the record $413 billion budget deficit.
Jim Dyer, chief of staff of the House Appropriations Committee, traditionally the first stop in Congress for any official request for money, said he expects a funding proposal from the Bush administration by Easter that ''could be around $100 billion,'' the vast majority of it for Iraq.
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Afghanistan: Women failed by progress in Afghanistan - Amnesty International
Afghanistan: Women failed by progress in Afghanistan - Amnesty International: "A large number of women in Afghanistan continue to be imprisoned for committing so-called 'zina' crimes. A female can be detained and prosecuted for adultery, running away from home or having consensual sex outside marriage, which are all referred to as zina crimes. The major factor preventing victims of rape complaining to the authorities is the fear that instead of being treated as a victim, they themselves will be prosecuted for unlawful sexual activity.
During its recent visit, AI found that a large number of female inmates in prisons across Afghanistan are incarcerated for the crime of 'running away' and for adultery, as well as for engaging in unlawful sexual activity. Amongst many judges and judicial officials, there was a prevailing lack of knowledge about the application of zina law."
Democratic Underground Forums - Islamic Army in Iraq threatens attacks in US: website
Democratic Underground Forums - Islamic Army in Iraq threatens attacks in US: website: "Islamic Army in Iraq threatens attacks in US: website
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=da...
DUBAI - The Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main armed groups fighting US forces in the war-torn country, threatened to carry out attacks inside the United States in 2005, in a statement posted on a website Monday.
This year “will bring woes on America. The mujahedeen (holy warriors) have prepared big surprises for your sons outside America and a big surprise for you inside America,” said the statement whose authenticity could not be confirmed.
The mujahedeen “will take the battle from inside our country (Iraq) to yours,” the statement said.
The shadowy Sunni Muslim group has claimed a number of attacks and killings of hostages in Iraq, including an Italian journalist and two Pakistanis.
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Chinese-Made Cars to Be Sold in U.S.
DETROIT (AP) -- The man who brought the Yugo and Subaru to this country has a new project -- becoming the first mass importer of low-cost Chinese-made cars.
Chery Automobile Co., owned by the Chinese government, has signed a deal with auto entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin and his privately held Visionary Vehicles LLC of New York to sell Chery's cars in United States, Visionary announced Sunday.
The companies aim to sell 250,000 vehicles in five models in their first year, 2007, with the goal of selling 1 million units of eight to 10 models by 2012, Visionary Vehicles chief of staff Paul Lambert said Sunday.
Lambert said the company will aim at selling vehicles well below the price of models now available while matching the quality of Japanese carmakers.
"America doesn't need another car company unless we can do it at 30 percent below market with quality and styling," Lambert said. "We've got to have a Toyota-Lexus-like quality."
The vehicles will carry 10-year, 100,000-mile warranties, Visionary said. No brand name has been selected. Visionary will invest $200 million in new Chery products for the U.S. market.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050102/importing_chinese_cars_9.html
