Evidence

By Michael Munk

US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 108 combat
casualties in the week ending May 6, as the official casualty total
reached at least 65,500. The total includes 33,325 dead and
wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 32,175
(since over a month ago on March 1) dead and injured from "non-hostile" causes.*

The actual total is over 85,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count
as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties discovered only
after they returned from Iraq -mainly brain trauma from explosions.**

In addition, a rare report showed that 1,123 "US civilian contractors" has been

killed since the invasion, including a record 353 in 2007. No numbers are

available on the wounded and injured, nor about casualties among the

"contractors" who are not US citizens. (Houston Post, Feb. 9, 2008.)

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb

By Francis T. Mandanici

Regarding whether President Bush and officials in his Administration committed any crimes, Senator Barack Obama told Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News that he would have his new “Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there” and if that information showed that “crimes have been committed, they should be investigated” because nobody is “above the law.” Bunch in his article stated that many Americans wondered whether an Obama Administration would seek to prosecute Bush officials for crimes that they may have committed. Senator Obama stated that at the present time “I can’t prejudge [whether Bush officials committed any crimes] because we don’t have access to all the material right now.” The other presidential candidates would probably say the same thing.

By John Stauber, Center for Media and Democracy

Eight thousand pages of documents relative to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see. These include the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders
The violence may be driving Tehran's efforts to back its own allies in Iraq.
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — A series of conflicts with insurgent groups along Iran's borders may be impelling Tehran to back its own allies in Iraq in what it regards as a proxy war with the U.S., according to security experts and officials in the U.S., Iran and Iraq.

Dozens of Iranian officials, members of the security forces and insurgents belonging to Kurdish, Arab Iranian and Baluch groups have died in the fighting in recent years. It now appears to be heating up once again after an unusually cold and snowy winter.

In recent weeks, Iranians have begun the now-routine bombardment of suspected rebel Iranian Kurd positions in northern Iraq, and guerrillas have claimed incursions into northwestern Iran.

By Mark Trevelyan, Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - British intelligence knew in advance that a former London janitor now awaiting trial by a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay would be tortured in an Arab country to extract evidence, his lawyers allege.

Lawyers for Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 29, filed a High Court case on Tuesday to try to force the British government to give evidence that would help his defense to expected charges before the tribunal at the U.S. detention camp on Cuba.

They say a British security official interviewed Mohamed after he was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, and told him he would be transferred to an Arab country and tortured.

Mohamed says he was flown to Morocco in July 2002 on a CIA plane and held there for 18 months, during which time he says he was repeatedly stripped naked and cut with a scalpel on his chest and penis. He was transferred to Afghanistan in 2004 and finally, later that year, to Guantanamo.

Hearing to be webcast today at 10 a.m. ET HERE.

By Avram Goldstein, Bloomberg

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors Monday, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications punched him, slammed him into walls, hung from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned Monday. Stefanowicz could not immediately be reached for comment at a Los Angeles address.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

To
Attorney General Michael Mukasey
Justice Department
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530

Request for and Report in Support of Appointment of Outside Special
Counsel to Investigate the Bush Administration’s Statements that Iraq Had
Sought Uranium for a Nuclear Weapon, which Violated the Criminal Statutes
18 U.S.C. § 1001 and 18 U.S.C. § 371 that Prohibit Making False and
Fraudulent Statements to Congress and Obstructing It’s Functions

Submitted by
Francis T. Mandanici
Attorney At Law

OPEN THE PDF

By Michael Smith, Times of London

Read Mick Smith's defence blog at www.timesonline.co.uk/micksmith

The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.

Despite a belligerent stance by Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2006, the sources said.

By Diane Farsetta, Center for Media and Democracy

The Pentagon launched its covert media analyst program in 2002, to sell the Iraq war. Later, it was used to sell an image of progress in Afghanistan, whitewash the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and defend the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping, as David Barstow reported in his New York Times expose.

But the pundits weren't just selling government talking points. As Robert Bevelacqua, William Cowan and Carlton Sherwood enjoyed high-level Pentagon access through the analyst program, their WVC3 Group sought "contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq," reported Barstow. Cowan admitted to "push[ing] hard" on a WVC3 contract, during a Pentagon-funded trip to Iraq.

By Medea Benjamin, Code Pink

Day One ~ April 29, Amman, Jordan

More Blogs From Medea | Support Iraqi Refugees
Medea with Amman Collateral Repair Project Team and Asma

It was an amazingly full first day in Jordan. Asma Al-Haidari, a brilliant Iraqi woman who lives in Amman and works with political as well as humanitarian groups, picked me up at 8am from the Toledo Hotel. Our first stop was the office of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), where a group of about 40 Iraqis was waiting on line to register with the agency or ask for some type of assistance. We started talking to the people on line. One woman, who was completely covered in a black abaya except for her eyes, had a disabled son she was trying to get medical help for. Another woman had a child with a tumor who needed an operation. All had fled the violence in Iraq and were living in Jordan without funds and in legal limbo.

By JAMES RISEN, New York Times

WASHINGTON — In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water — one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool — that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

The Al Jazeera cameraman describes how he was treated during the seven years he was detained at the US detention center in Cuba.

By Helen Thomas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The American people have heard President Bush and his spokespeople say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture.

Whether Bush was believed or not is another story — especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. It’s understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public.

Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including “waterboarding” or simulated drowning.

“As a matter of fact,” Bush added, “I told the country we did that. And I told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it.”

The president added, “I didn’t have any problems at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheik Mohammed knew.”

By Time

Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq in 2003-2004, has written a new memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story, an account of his life and his service in Iraq. Sanchez was a three-star general — and the military's senior Hispanic officer — when he led U.S. forces in the first year of the war. He was relieved of his command by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2004 following the revelations of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In 2005, Marine General Peter Pace, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him to say his career was over and he wouldn't get the promotion to a full general — four stars — that Sanchez says he was promised. Six months later, at Rumsfeld's request, he showed up at the Pentagon for a meeting with the defense secretary shortly before retiring. In this exclusive excerpt, Sanchez details what happened next:

by Linda Milazzo

I don't like to speculate - but the reported suicide of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam," is difficult for me to fathom. The suspicion I hold that the "suicide" of this 52 year old seemingly vibrant woman, who could reveal the identities of the powerful Washingtonians who used her "escort" services, may not have been a suicide at all, causes me sadness - over the tragic death of Palfrey herself, and over my distrust of the powerful who have proven time and again that they will do anything to protect their fortunes and their "good" names.

According to the HuffingtonPost, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/dc-madam-dead-in-apparent_n_996...), Palfrey had spoken out on suicide in the past when she reflected on the death of one of her former escorts, University of Maryland Professor, Brandy Britton. Palfrey said of Britton's suicide:

By Larisa Alexandrovna, Muriel Kane and Lindsay Beyerstein
The Permanent Republican Majority Part VI, Raw Story

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.

By Adam Goldman, Associated Press

New York - The military continued to use abusive interrogation methods on detainees after a 2003 directive meant to end such practices, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday after reviewing newly released documents.

The Department of Defense documents shed light on the use of psychologists in military interrogations and the failure of medical workers to report abuse of detainees, the ACLU said.

"The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse - a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said.

A Pentagon spokesman said medical workers understood the responsibility to provide humane medical care to detainees.