These are the archives for the week ending 4th November 2005
CIA has secret prisons
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
Washington Post, 2/11/05
Abuse of prisoners
Last month a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base excused himself from a conversation with his lawyer and stepped into a cell, where he slashed his arm and hung himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a detainee held for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates began a hunger strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite confinement, and more than two dozen are being kept alive only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their accounts would surely add to the discredit the United States has earned for its lawless treatment of foreign prisoners.
Guantanamo, however, is not the worst problem. The CIA maintains its own network of secret prisons, into which 100 or more terrorist suspects have "disappeared" as if they were victims of a Third World dictatorship. Held in dark underground cells, the prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the CIA and no checks on their treatment, even by the International Red Cross.
President Bush has authorized interrogators to subject these men to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment that is illegal in the United States and that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that allow the CIA prisons on their territory violate this international law, if not their own laws.
Washington Post, 3/11/05
Iraq withdrawal would endanger Israel
President George W Bush's national security adviser warned Monday that a hasty US withdrawal from Iraq would embolden extremists who seek "the eventual destruction of Israel". In remarks prepared for delivery to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee summit, Stephen Hadley said building democracy where Saddam Hussein's regime once stood would help that staunch US ally.
"The spread of democracy will make the Middle East a safer neighborhood for Israel. An American retreat from Iraq, on the other hand, would only strengthen the terrorists who seek the enslavement of Iraq and the eventual destruction of Israel," said Hadley.
Daily Times, Pakistan, 2/11/05
Trident to be replaced
The defence secretary, John Reid, today dropped a broad hint the government will commission a replacement for the Trident nuclear deterrent, saying the UK needed a "range of responses" to counter future threats.
Mr Reid said the government's review of a replacement for the ageing submarine-based Trident system would start from the assumption that as long as there was a potential enemy state with nuclear weapons, Britain would have to retain a nuclear capability.
Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost £1m each, could be upgraded for long-range use, fitted with British-built nuclear warheads and fired from aircraft launched at a time of crisis.
This is a cheaper option than the fleet of four Trident submarines that patrol the seas and cost an estimated £700m a year to maintain.
Guardian 1/11/05 & Independent 1/1//05
Syria rejects UN resolution
Syria rejected a UN resolution demanding it to co-operate fully with an international probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri or face "further action".
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa slammed the UN report for accusing Damascus without due process. Monday's resolution was only adopted after its sponsors; the U.S., France and the UK, dropped a specific threat of economic sanctions against Syria. Otherwise, Russia, China and Algeria would have abstained. Instead, the resolution says the council "could consider further action" if Syria fails to meet demands.
Stepping up pressure on Syria, the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the resolution "made it clear that failure to comply with these demands will lead to serious consequences from the international community."
Aljazeera.com 1/11/05
Gulf War syndrome recognised
After years of controversy, Gulf war syndrome was officially recognised yesterday as a distinct set of symptoms suffered by British army veterans sent to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1991.
In a decision which has widespread implications for the Ministry of Defence, the war pensions appeals tribunal ruled that the syndrome existed as an 'umbrella term' covering specific symptoms and conditions attributed to service in the 1991 Gulf war.
Veterans have been trying for years to persuade the MoD to acknowledge the existence of a collection of symptoms, if not a single identifiable disease, attributable to service in the Gulf war, including cocktails of vaccinations and inoculations against chemical and biological attacks.
Guardian 1/11/05
US death toll highest since January
The military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers and marines near Baghdad on Monday, making October the fourth deadliest month for troops here since the war began. The attacks brought the number of Americans killed in October to 92, the highest monthly toll since January, when 106 American troops were killed in violence ahead of national elections here.
This month's death toll and January's have been surpassed only twice since the war began: in November 2004, when Americans battled Sunni Arab rebels in Falluja, and in April 2004, when they fought militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr in Najaf.
New York Times, 31/10/05
US strikes civilians
A US military air raid in western Iraq has caused many deaths, reports from Iraq say. The US military said it had targeted what it called an al-Qaeda cell leader in an air strike near Karabilah, on the border with Syria.
US officials insisted it was a precision strike designed to avoid civilian casualties. But doctors at a hospital in the nearby town of Qaim said there were more than 30 dead, including women and children.
BBC News, 31/10/05
Reconstruction money running out
As the money runs out on the $30 billion American-financed reconstruction of Iraq, the officials in charge cannot say how many planned projects they will complete, and there is no clear source for hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to operate the projects that have been finished, according to a report to Congress released yesterday.
The report, by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, describes some progress but also an array of projects that have gone awry, sometimes astonishingly, like electrical substations that were built at great cost but never connected to the country's electrical grid. With more than 93 percent of the American money now committed to specific projects, it could become increasingly difficult to solve those problems.
New statistics compiled in the report also reveal a jump in deaths and injuries of contract workers in Iraq, many of whom worked on reconstruction projects. At least 412 contractors and other civilian workers have died since the American-led invasion, 147 of them Americans. In June those numbers, based on insurance claims, were 330 and 113, respectively.
New York Times, 31/10/05
Thousands quit Territorial Army
The Territorial Army (TA) is suffering a manning crisis with more than 6,000 soldiers quitting in the past year because of the war in Iraq. A £3m television advertising campaign has flopped, bringing in fewer than 600 recruits, and, at 35,000, the strength of the TA has dropped to its lowest point since it was founded in 1907.
This is more than 6,000 below its required strength of 41,610. Ministers admit the real figures are even worse - only 24,000 troops are fully trained and in practice only 12,000 TA soldiers are now available to back up the regular army on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.
The shortages come as General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, expressed concern at the lack of troops to patrol the border between the British sector and Iran. His comments follow the refusal of John Reid, the defence secretary, to allow military commanders to increase the number of British troops in southern Iraq by 25%.
Sunday Times, 30/10/05
Kurds settling Kirkuk area
Providing money, building materials and even schematic drawings, Kurdish political parties have repatriated thousands of Kurds into the tense northern oil city of Kirkuk and its surrounding villages, operating outside the framework of Iraq's newly ratified constitution and sparking sporadic violence between Kurdish settlers and the Arabs who are a minority here, according to U.S. military officials and Iraqi political leaders.
The rapidly expanding settlements, composed of two-bedroom concrete houses whose dimensions are prescribed by the Kurdish parties, are effectively re-engineering the demography of northern Iraq, enabling the Kurds to add what ultimately may be hundreds of thousands of voters ahead of a planned 2007 referendum on the status of Kirkuk. The Kurds hope to make the city and its vast oil reserves part of an autonomous Kurdistan.
Washington Post, 30/10/05
Ill-equipped Iraqi troops bearing brunt of attacks
Iraqi deaths continue to mount, particularly in Diyala Province where American troops have been working since February to engage more Iraqi troops in the war. At least 209 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been killed this year in the provincial capital, Baquba, and a swath of the surrounding province, compared with the deaths of eight American soldiers in the same area.
"Our higher level of armor obviously protects us quite a bit more, as does the way we operate," said Maj. Steven Warren, a spokesman for the Third Brigade Combat Team. "The Iraqis put quite a few more people in their trucks, and those trucks aren't armored. No armor plus more people in the truck equals a substantially higher casualty rate."
The Army unit in charge of equipping and training the Iraqis, the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, said it was trying to replace much of the Iraqi fleet with new armored trucks. But it has largely restricted its shopping to American companies that are still swamped by orders for American troops. The unit's biggest initiative, to give the Iraqis 1,500 armored Humvees, will not begin until December, and most will not be built until next summer, military and company officials said.
New York Times, 30/10/05
War has cost Britain £3.1 billion so far
British involvement in Iraq has so far cost the country nearly £3.1 billion, the Ministry of Defence said. In its annual report published today, the MoD revealed British operations in the Gulf totalled £910 million in the last financial year to March 31, compared with £1.3 billion in 2003/4 and £847 million in 2002/3.
Figures showed the MoD spent £30.88 billion overall in the year to March. There are currently about 8,500 British troops stationed in Iraq, mainly in the south of the country around the city of Basra. There are about 1,000 armed service personnel in Afghanistan.
Forbes Business, 28/10/05
Blair hints at military action against Iran
Tony Blair gave warning last night that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Ending a one-day European Union summit, the Prime Minister called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a disgrace.
Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said that he had often been urged not to take action against Iran. But he added: "If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is - when are you going to do something about Iran? Can you imagine a State like that with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons?" It was the first time Mr Blair had even hinted at military action and his words are likely to alarm Labour MPs.
Times, 28/10/05
Protests block new US base in Japan
The United States has been forced to back down over its plan to build a large offshore military base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa after local protests stalled construction. Washington and Tokyo had wanted to build a heliport and 1.5-mile runway over pristine coral reef more than a mile offshore, near Heneko village. But the plan enraged many locals on the small island, which already hosts around half of the 37,000 American troops stationed in Japan.
Tokyo is an important ally in America's "war on terror" and Washington considers Okinawa, which is close to China and North Korea, a vital military lynchpin amid a major realignment of US forces worldwide. Japan contributes more than $1bn (£560m) a year and leases thousands of acres of land to US forces stationed in the country.
Independent, 27/10/05