Balata, West Bank: Israeli missile attack: 2 Pal dead
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel missile kills Palestinians: "14 June, 2004

Two Palestinians were killed when their car was hit by an Israeli missile near the northern West Bank town of Nablus.

Both are said to belong to Palestinian militant group, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - one was identified as Khalil Marshoud, a local leader of the group.

The raid at the entrance to the Balata refugee camp left three people injured.

People at the camp said the missile came from a helicopter. They said they found fragments around the large crater it left in the road.
- posted by Editor @ 7:17 PM

A torturer's charter: harsh measures OK if interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing harm is not his objective"
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A torturer's charter: "Secret documents show that US interrogators are above the law | Richard Norton-Taylor | Saturday June 12, 2004 | The Guardian

On the stage of a London theatre on Thursday night, a lawyer held up an official US document, classified by Donald Rumsfeld as 'secret' and 'not for foreign eyes'. ...
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... Rumsfeld's classified document, drawn up by US government lawyers, bears directly on the case. It argues that American interrogators can ignore US domestic law banning torture, because it would restrict the president's powers in his "war on terror".

The document, drawn up last year, says that "criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" over "the conduct of war". It adds: "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the prohibition of torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogators undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority".

The document states that US interrogators can use harsh measures as long as they were not "specifically intended" to inflict "severe mental pain or suffering". In another passage, it says that even if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent."

Interrogators can appeal to the defence of "necessity" - in other words, they can argue that torturing individuals is needed to prevent greater harm or evil such as threats to the safety of the nation. ...

The document, on the face of it, is a charter allowing the US president to abuse human rights and ignore domestic as well as international law.
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... But whatever Guantánamo Bay's territorial status, according to the Rumsfeld document, detainees there and anywhere else can be tortured at will in Bush's global "war" on terrorism.

"The authorisation I issued was that anything we did would conform to US laws and would be consistent with international treaty obligations," Bush said this week. Little comfort there.
- posted by Editor @ 6:47 AM

Dog handlers had contest to see how many detainees involuntarily urinate out of fear : violation of U.S. Army field policyb
Use of Dogs to Scare Prisoners Was Authorized (washingtonpost.com): "Military Intelligence Personnel Were Involved, Handlers Say | By Josh White and Scott Higham | Washington Post Staff Writers | Friday, June 11, 2004; Page A01

U.S. intelligence personnel ordered military dog handlers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to use unmuzzled dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees during interrogations late last year, a plan approved by the highest-ranking military intelligence officer at the facility, according to sworn statements the handlers provided to military investigators.

A military intelligence interrogator also told investigators that two dog handlers at Abu Ghraib were "having a contest" to see how many detainees they could make involuntarily urinate out of fear of the dogs, according to the previously undisclosed statements obtained by The Washington Post.

The statements by the dog handlers provide the clearest indication yet that military intelligence personnel were deeply involved in tactics later deemed by a U.S. Army general to be "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses."
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Human rights experts said the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib violates longstanding tenets regulating the treatment of prisoners and civilians under the control of an occupying force, including the Army's field manual, which prohibits "acts of violence or intimidation" by American soldiers.

"Using dogs to frighten and intimidate prisoners is a violation of the Geneva Convention," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, an international organization based in New York. "It's a violation of U.S. policy as stated in the Army field manual, and it's a violation of the prohibition against cruel treatment." ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:54 PM

Bush's proposal was generating "resentments and frustrations from one end of the Arab world to the other." Egypt and Saudi Arabia decline to attend
baltimoresun.com - Chirac at odds with Bush's Mideast plan: "France, Arab leaders say conflicts must be resolved before spurring reforms | By David L. Greene | Sun National Staff | Originally published June 10, 2004

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- President Bush's plan to spread democratic values across the Middle East ran into resistance yesterday from France -- as well as from Arab leaders -- showing cracks in what the White House has been promoting as a firm alliance supportive of Bush's vision.

Skeptics of Bush's Middle East initiative, for which the president was seeking support at a summit off the Georgia coast, argued that Bush should focus on bringing peace to Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before trying to spur broader reforms in the region.

Some also warned that the president's ideas may be seen in the Arab world as a bid to impose values on a region with distinct customs and ways of thinking. President Jacques Chirac of France, the most vocal critic, said that Bush's proposal was generating "resentments and frustrations from one end of the Arab world to the other."
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Chirac's comments, echoed by some Arab leaders, reflected a disagreement that seemed at odds with how the White House had portrayed the summit: as a three-day meeting full of diplomatic pleasantries and harmony among leaders who had parted ways on the Iraq war.

Leaders from the G-8 states -- the United States, Italy, Canada, France, Russia, Britain, Japan, Germany -- lunched with a handful of leaders from the Middle East to discuss Bush's call for democratic reform. Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- two of the countries targeted for reform -- declined to attend the summit.
- posted by Editor @ 8:27 PM

Nablus, Bethlehem: IDF kills: 2 Pal, 13 yr-old and another youth
Excite News: "Israel Offers Cash Advances to Settlers | Jun 10, 10:06 PM (ET) | By JOSEF FEDERMAN

Meanwhile, in violence late Thursday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 13-year-old boy during a patrol in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinians said. Soldiers killed another Palestinian youth in a village near Bethlehem.

In both cases, the military said, soldiers fired at Palestinians throwing firebombs."
- posted by Editor @ 8:22 PM

Dershowitz and terror: advocates 'humane' torture, such as 'a sterilised needle inserted under the fingernails
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Dershowitz and terror: "Dershowitz and terror | Monday June 7, 2004 | The Guardian

Alan Dershowitz (In love with death, June 4) glosses over some very fundamental facts. Britain did not displace India's population during the heyday of the British empire. Had Gandhi and Martin Luther King been Palestinians, they would have chosen a very different type of resistance.

Israel goes to the point of denying the very existence of the Palestinians by continuing to deny them the right to their independent and free state on their own land. The mandate borders of Israel drawn by the UN were expanded through Israeli terrorism and massacres perpetrated by the Irgun and other terrorist Zionist groups.

The fatalities of innocent Palestinian civilians under occupation are proportionally far greater than the fatalities of the innocent victims of Palestinian suicide bombers. Let us not forget that 720 innocent Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli army and by armed Jewish settlers since the beginning of the intifada.

Islam does not call for terrorist action - nor does the Wahabi sect which Dershowitz makes reference to. I find it odd that you publish a point of view which supports an illegal occupation and is totally insensitive to its evils.
-Ali Muhsen Hamid | Head of the London office, League of Arab States

In Dershowitz's book, Why Terrorism Works, which you include a puff for, he advocates, in contravention of international law, 'humane' forms of torture, such as 'a sterilised needle inserted under the fingernails to produce unbearable pain ...[or] a dental drill through an unanesthetized tooth'. Is it surprising that Abu Ghraibs occur?
- Neil MacMaster | Norwich "
- posted by Editor @ 5:09 PM

To resolve a feud within the Likud, Elliott Abrams had set in motion a major Israeli killing spree: [tracking the neo-con connections]
(DV) Amr: Bush's Neo-Con Praetorian Guards: "by Ahmed Amr | www.dissidentvoice.org | June 5, 2004

A few weeks ago, on April 14th, George Bush decided to void the Palestinians' right to return to their homeland. The President also took the occasion to make illegal Jewish settlements a permanent "fact on the ground." In a single press conference with Ariel Sharon, he managed to truncate the size of a Palestinian state and assault the fundamental human rights of refugees around the world. One has to assume that Bush has now assumed the right to decide which other group of refugees can forget about ever returning to their native lands.

... Bush dispatched Elliott Abrams to negotiate terms with Sharon. Abrams, the radical Likudnik activist of Iran/Contra fame, has a history of beating the drums of the Netenyahu wing of the Likud party. His mission was to convince Netenyahu to accept the terms of the "moderate" Sharon who had declared his intention to withdraw from Gaza.

Abrams convinced Netenyahu to agree to stop lobbying against Sharon's plan, which was scheduled to come up for a vote in the Likud party. But his agreement came with a stiff price. Netenyahu's "generous offer" was contingent on getting American assurances that the Palestinians right of return would be voided and that the settlements would become legal.

Upon returning to America, Abrams held a meeting in the White House with the leadership of the Christian Zionist movement, a key Bush constituency. He wanted to reassure them that Gaza was not part of biblical Israel and evacuating it would not stall the Second Coming of Jesus or the prospects of a timely advent of the rapture and the end of times. You have to marvel at the marketing skills of this Likudnik fanatic who doesn't even believe in the First Coming of the Messiah.

In any case, Abrams managed to convince Bush that he had cut a great deal. All Bush needed to do was to stiff the Palestinian on a few of their rights and shrink the boundaries of the Palestinian Bantustan to accommodate Israeli expansionist fantasies.
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In an effort to resolve a feud within the Likud, Elliott Abrams had set in motion a major Israeli killing spree.
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Abram's Likudnik antics are typical of the standard operating procedure in the Bush administration. In reviewing the resume of the folks Bush appointed as architects a "Greater Middle East," one runs into a who's who list of professional Jewish activists with a long record of supporting the most extreme right wing factions in Israel.

-Wolfowitz's sister actually gave up on America and immigrated to Israel.
-Like his sibling, he has spent his whole adult life working on Likudnik agendas.
-Douglas Feith's law partner in Israel represents the right wing settler movement.
-Lewis Libby, the lawyer who convinced Clinton to pardon the tax dodging Mark Rich, has well established ties to Israeli intelligence.
-Richard Perle sits on the board of the Jerusalem Post and works with Conrad Black, a media mogul and Zionist propagandist.
-Along with Dick Cheney's wife, all four are affiliated with the neo-con movement that has its imprint all over Bush's Middle East policies.
-Dick Cheney and his wife actually retained Bernard Lewis to tutor our president of vice on the "Arab mind."
-Lewis is a vicious anti-Arab racist and a suspect pseudo-academic who was convicted in a French court of denying the Armenian genocide.
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It should come as no surprise that Douglas Feith was the Pentagon official who signed off on torturing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners. Or that Feith and Libby are the main suspects in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent. Or that Wolfowitz and Perle virtually created Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and collaborated with the INC in fabricating false intelligence and feeding it to neo-con media operatives like Judith Miller and Charles Krauthammer. Or that Libby and Feith were the force behind setting up the Office of Special Plans that sabotaged the CIA's and DIA's intelligence gathering operations. Or that Feith was in charge of the now discredited post invasion fantasies. Or that Paul Bremer, the current emperor of Baghdad, is a self-declared neo-con and a protégé of Henry Kissinger. Or that Michael Rubin, a neo-con zealot, was given a major role in administering our Iraqi colony. After his assignment in Baghdad, Rubin went right back to his desk at the American Enterprise Institute.
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None of this is a secret. It is just one of those taboo subjects that can get you libeled as an anti-Semite if you so much as hint at who these people are or question their allegiance to a foreign state ruled by a serial war criminal. ...

- posted by Editor @ 7:48 PM

Many Christians see this war, not as a war against terrorists, they see it as a war against the infidels: preparation for Armageddon and Rapture
(DV) Droubay: It's Armageddon Time: "Bush and his loyal Christian fundamentalists want you to have a front row seat! (Whether you want one or not) | by Sandi Magathan Droubay M.A | www.dissidentvoice.org | June 5, 2004 | First Published in OpEd News.com

Religion and Politics do not make good bedfellows. They never have. Why is it that we can recognize the danger posed by fundamentalist extremists in other religions but not our home grown religious extremists. I'm talking about the problem with many Conservative Christians in our own country.

Let’s take a look at the relationship between the Christian Right and our present administration. During the 2000 presidential campaign George Bush stated, “I feel that God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it; … I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.” During one debate, Bush stated that: “Christ” was his favorite” philosopher.”
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Many Christians, especially the Fundamentalist branch, see this war, not as a war against terrorists, they see it as a war against the infidels, good against evil; Christians against Muslims, whose God is Allah, a “different” God. For Conservative Christians this is a religious war.

The conflict in Iraq isn’t the only conflict that has grabbed the attention of Religious Conservatives, as they are also very interested in the on-going conflict between the Palestinians and Jews in Israel. Why is that?

Fundamentalist Christians see biblical prophesy being played out in this part of the world. This conflict fits in with their doomsday philosophy; Armageddon, the end of the world. ...
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Christ will come to the rescue and a great battle will ensue between Christ and Satan on the plain of Armageddon outside of Jerusalem; at this time the seventh dispensation will begin. I kid you not, there are Christians buying up real estate near Armageddon so they will have a front row seat for the big day. Here’s the good part, the faithful, those who have been saved in Christ, or” born again,” will be taken up into heaven, referred to as the Rapture. The rest of us the unsaved Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Jews will be left to suffer through the rough times. Ever wonder why Christians are so obsessed with “saving” people. The more the merrier, and it’s for our own good after all.
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The Jews have a special role to play in this End of Days drama. First it was necessary for them to inhabit the land of Israel again- this would be a sign that the end days were upon us. ...
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The Religious Right believes that God gave Israelites that land which historically belongs to them, every inch of it. What of the Palestinians who inhabit that land? They are, according to Conservative Christians, in the way and must be removed in order for the prophesy to be fulfilled, no matter what. They are Arabs and they worship the “wrong” God. They are doomed to burn in hell anyway, unless they convert. Jews are part of the story but it’s really only about the “saved” Christians in the end. ...
- posted by Editor @ 7:38 PM

Gaza and West Bank: IDF kills: 3 Pal including 2 teenagers and one in wheelchair
Haaretz - Israel News: "07/06/2004 21:23 | IDF kills two Palestinians in territories | By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Israel Defense Forces troops shot dead a Palestinian youth at the Farun village south of the West Bank city of Tul Karm on Monday during a protest in the area.

He was identified as Omar Farah, aged 19.

In the Gaza Strip, IDF troops shot dead a 17-year-old Mohammed Nabahan in Khan Yunis, close to the Neveh Dekalim settlement late Sunday night.

According to the IDF, troops in the area saw a 'suspicious looking' figure at the Khan Yunis cemetery, and opened fire at him.

Earlier Sunday, troops shot dead a wheelchair-bound Palestinian at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, north of Jerusalem."
- posted by Editor @ 7:26 PM