These are the archives for the week ending 25th February 2005
Bush's uncle does well
President Bush's uncle, who serves on the board of a U.S. defense contractor with over $100 million in business in Iraq, recently cashed in on some of that lucrative work, a government filing showed on Wednesday. William H.T.
"Bucky" Bush exercised options on 8,438 shares worth about $450,000 from St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI), according to a Jan. 18 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Reuters, 23/2/05
British government were warned war was illegal
The British Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal. The Government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted in an international court that it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action.
It has also been revealed that a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in Lord Goldsmith's name - and presented by ministers as his official opinion before a crucial House of Commons vote - was drawn up in Prime Minister Tony Blair's Downing Street office, not in the Attorney-General's chambers. It appears Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time.
In a letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a "crime of aggression". She said she could not agree to military action in circumstances she described as "detrimental to the international order and the rule of law".
The Age, Australia, 24/2/05
British soldiers guilty of abuse
Two British soldiers were today found guilty of charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Camp Breadbasket aid camp near Basra, in southern Iraq.The abuse by the soldiers, from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, took place in May 2003 and was captured in a series of disturbing photographs taken at the camp.
What they showed was described by Judge Advocate Hunter as "brutal", "cruel" and "revolting" behaviour, which had "undoubtedly tarnished the international reputation of the British army, and to some extent the British nation, too".
Guardian, 24/2/04
US begins to negotiate
American officials are talking to negotiators from the anti-US resistance in Iraq, whom they have denounced in the past as foreign fighters and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime. The Sunni guerrillas want a timetable for a US withdrawal, first from Iraqi cities and then from the country as a whole. American officials aim to see if they can drive a wedge between nationalist guerrillas and fanatical Islamist groups.
Abu Marwan, a resistance commander, is quoted as saying that the insurgents want to "fight and negotiate". They are modelling their strategy on that of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. This means creating a united political organisation with a programme opposed to the US occupation.
US military commanders are now dubious about the chances of winning an outright military victory over the Sunni rebels who have a firm core of supporters among the five million-strong Sunni Muslim community. The US military has lost 1,479 dead and 10,740 wounded in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.
Independent, 22/2/05
US army recruitment dropping
The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers . For the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in October with only 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000 active-duty recruits already in the pipeline. That amounts to less than half of last year's figure and falls well below the Army's goal of 25 percent.
The recruiting difficulties reflect unprecedented demands on today's soldiers that are unlikely to let up soon. Never before has the all-volunteer Army deployed to war zones in such large numbers for multiple, yearlong tours.
Washington Post, 21/2/05
Prisons pose problem for occupation forces
A bloody inmate riot three weeks ago at the biggest U.S.-run detention facility in Iraq has exposed an increasingly hard-core prison population that is confronting U.S. forces with a growing risk of prison violence, according to military officers. U.S. troops who dealt with the clash tell of a chaotic and threatening situation. They say the extent of violence surprised them. They also say the nonlethal weapons available to them at the time for crowd control proved largely ineffectual.
About 3,180 prisoners are now at the Abu Ghraib facility, which has remained the U.S. military's primary interrogation center. Camp Bucca, which has a maximum capacity of 6,000 detainees, is up to about 5,150. Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, houses about 100 "high-value" detainees. Another 1,300 or so suspected insurgents are being held for initial screenings at military brigade and division levels, according to military figures.
Washington Post, 21/2/05
Fuel attacks carefully targetted
Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say. The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
New York Times, 21/2/05
Ramadi under curfew
US Marines and Iraqi troops set up checkpoints and imposed an 8 pm to 6 am curfew on the rebellious Sunni city of Ramadi today, part of a nationwide effort to restore order after last month's election.
It was not clear if the troops of the 1st Marine expeditionary force and Iraqi soldiers, launching Operation River Blitz, would carry out a larger offensive on Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad, which has essentially been in guerrilla hands for most of last year.
Calcutta Telegraph, 21/2/05
British involved in drafting torture policy
A British official was involved in drafting rules permitting extreme interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, centre of the controversy over the use of torture by US forces against Iraqi prisoners. Last night it emerged that the government has been forced to retract claims that no British military officer had seen or been involved with the crucial document allowing guards to subject detainees to interrogation methods including the use of dogs, sleep deprivation and stress positions, in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Last year the jail achieved notoriety when photographs emerged of guards forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sex acts. Other photographs showed detainees being set upon with dogs and beaten. The Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, has admitted in a letter to a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, that a senior British Army lawyer assigned to the coalition's legal department in Baghdad contributed to 'comments provided by his superior' when drafting the document.
'For the government to now admit that their earlier statement was incorrect and that a senior British lawyer had some role in the drafting process is very worrying,' Price said. 'The use of techniques such as sensory deprivation are illegal under British military law. It's against the Geneva Convention, too .'
Observer, 20/2/05
Attacks kill more than 50
Eight suicide bombers struck in quick succession Saturday in a wave of attacks that killed 55 people. Ninety-one people have been killed in violence in the past two days.
Bayan Jaber, a leading member of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, said the attacks had failed to create a divide between Shiites and the Sunni Arab minority. Shiites account for about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. The Sunnis make up 20 percent of the population, but dominated politics under Saddam Hussein and previous governments after Iraq gained independence from Britain.
Jaber called the attackers a small faction of Sunnis ''who are extremist Wahhabis who want to spark a civil war in Iraq.'' But, he added, ''a sectarian war will never occur in Iraq because Iraq is not like Afghanistan or Pakistan. We have tribal, marital, and historical relations with Sunnis and nothing will affect it.''
Boston Globe, 19/2/05
Coalition getting smaller
President Bush, who hopes to coax more Iraq support from European allies next week, used to boast that some 50 nations had joined the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Today, a public listing is nowhere to be found. One thing, though, is clear: The coalition is shrinking.
While a current list of coalition countries - those helping out in Iraq with troops, equipment, monetary or political support - is not easy to come by, there is a public listing of the countries that have actual troops in Iraq. These 20-plus countries, which have combat and support forces in Iraq under the command of Gen. George Casey Jr., make up the multinational force.
Daniel Goure, a Defense Department official in the first Bush administration, said current Bush officials apparently decided to start talking about a "multinational force" instead of a "coalition" to avoid questions about which countries were in or out. "They're anticipating what is coming down the road," Goure said. "It's an acceptance of the fact that countries are going to be withdrawing."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18/2/05