WASHINGTON, May 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at their 2005 Policy Conference last night. Pelosi discussed the relationship between the United States and Israel and the continued effort for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Below are her remarks:

"Thank you, Amy Friedkin, my dear friend for so many years. Californians, North and South, are proud of your great leadership at AIPAC. And to Bernice Manocherian, President of AIPAC, thank you. All who care about peace in the Middle East are grateful for your strength and wisdom in guiding AIPAC. As a native of Baltimore, I take special pride of your incoming President, Howard Friedman, who will continue in the tradition of outstanding leadership at AIPAC. "I also want to acknowledge all of the students who are here. It is great to see so many young people taking such an interest in public affairs, especially on one of the critical issues of our time: peace in the Middle East.

"This spring, I was in Israel as part of a congressional trip that also took us to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. One of the most powerful experiences was taking a helicopter toward Gaza, over the path of the security fence. We set down in a field that belonged to a local kibbutz. It was a cool but sunny day, and the field was starting to bloom with mustard. Mustard is a crop that grows in California, and it felt at that moment as if I were home. "And then we were told that the reason we had to land in that field, as opposed to our actual destination, was because there had been an infiltration that morning, and they weren't sure how secure the area was. And that point alone brought us back to the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence. "While in Israel, we met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Vice Premier Shimon Perez. From them and from other leaders, we heard something I had not heard in a long time: cautious optimism. This was an attitude quite different from the one that confronted us when I spoke to AIPAC two years ago. "One thing, however is unchanged: America's commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering. America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship. "Prime Minister Sharon's leadership of Israel at this crucial time has been remarkable. He has brought Israel through an extremely challenging period, and now he has made the difficult decision that it is in Israel's national security interest to disengage from Gaza.

"In the next few months, Israeli settlers will be evacuated entirely from Gaza and from four settlements in the northern West Bank. This courageous decision is gut-wrenching for Israel.

"Israel's decision can be a decisive milestone on the road to peace. If the Palestinians agree to coordinate with Israel on the evacuation, establish the rule of law, and demonstrate a capacity to govern, the world may be convinced that finally there is a real partner for peace.

"Any progress on the Roadmap for Peace must be based on real change on the ground, as evidenced by the establishment of an accountable, and reconstituted Palestinian security force that prevents terrorism, not promotes it. "Fortunately, Palestinian Authority President Abbas is no Yasir Arafat. He has condemned terrorism in Arabic, stating that it prolongs the day that the Palestinian goal of statehood can be achieved, and, at least as significant, stating that terrorism is immoral. He has begun to restructure the security services. All that is commendable.

"But he has not removed Arafat's corrupt cronies from positions of power, nor has he moved to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. That is, I am sorry to say, cause for concern. President Abbas has said his goal is to establish the rule of law, but he has done nowhere near enough to realize that vision, and now he is confronted with a huge challenge: by the end of summer, Israel will be out of Gaza.

"Can Gaza become a pilot case for self-government for a Palestinian state? Or will it become a terrorist haven, a launching pad for rockets into Israel? "President Abbas must act, for his own good, against those he must know are his enemies and are the enemies of the aspirations of the Palestinian people. "The United States, just as Israel, wants to see him succeed. That is why I was so pleased when President Bush dispatched Jim Wolfensohn to help with the Gaza withdrawal. It is why I supported additional aid to the Palestinians in the Emergency Supplemental bill that recently passed Congress.

"There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.

"The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology.

"Proliferation represents a clear threat to Israel and to America. It must be confronted by an international coalition against proliferation, with a commitment and a coalition every bit as strong as our commitment to the war against terror. "The people of Israel long for peace and are willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it. We hope that peace and security come soon - and that this moment of opportunity is not lost. As Israel continues to take risks for peace, she will have no friend more steadfast that the United States.

"In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.' "The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever."

Analysts believe that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pledge in Washington to bolster the peace process, notably by freeing 400 prisoners, is widely seen back in Israel as nothing more than a ploy to impress George Bush on the eve of the U.S. president's summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

When Sharon held talks with Bush last month at his Texas ranch, Sharon tried hard to paint Abbas as the villain of the peace but the strategy backfired when Bush emphasised his confidence in Abbas at a joint press conference with Sharon.

When the Israeli leader made the same argument at a meeting with U.S. Senate majority leader Bill Frist earlier this month, the Republican promptly met with Abbas and hailed him as a "bold leader".

In a speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday, Sharon attempted a change in tactics by promising to "do our utmost to cooperate with the new Palestinian leadership and will take the needed measures to help Chairman Abbas.

"We are willing to help Chairman Abbas as much as we can, as long as we do not risk our security. That is the red line."

He then pledged to release 400 Palestinian prisoners soon after his return to Israel and said that he was willing to hand over responsibility for security responsibility to the Palestinians in more parts of the West Bank.

However, both “pledges” were agreed on at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit between Sharon and Abbas back in February.

"Sharon's declarations are all just for show," Akiva Elder, a columnist for Israel's Haaretz daily, said. "On the ground, there has been no change. What he announced yesterday should have already been done after Sharm el-Sheikh but hasn't been.”

Israel has already transferred security control in two West Bank cities but have so far held back from making a similar move in three other cities on the grounds that resistance groups have not been disarmed.

Though five hundred prisoners were released soon after February's summit the promised second batch of 400 releases has yet to be put into effect.

Palestinian cabinet minister Ghassan Khatib was also unimpressed with Sharon's announcement, claiming it was "pure propaganda because he is in the United States.

"Since Sharm el-Sheikh, Israel has arrested more than 400 Palestinians," the planning minister told AFP.

"Sharon wants to show the United States he is ready to implement what they want, but he just talks without anything happening on the ground."

A senior Israeli foreign ministry official agreed that Sharon's comments were part of a show designed to impress Washington.

"Sharon says that he wants to cooperate with the Palestinians and that it is the Palestinians who are balking at this," the official said.

"We are dealing with the Palestinians like a teacher with a naughty schoolboy, when in reality it is Israel that does not want to work with the Palestinians on the pullout" of settlers from the Gaza Strip this summer.

The Palestinians remain deeply sceptical over the pullout from Gaza, saying it is designed to circumvent the roadmap and negate pressure on Israel for a more comprehensive pullout from the West Bank.

"As we have stated several times in the past, we want from the United States a clear political position for the implementation of the roadmap, as well as economic support," Abbas said.

After the horrific story of soldiers abusing two Palestinian workers, and forcing one of them to drink the soldiers’ urine until he fainted, one of the soldiers stood in court and admitted to the hidden truth which even the press was shy to say, “What we did was inhuman”.

The extreme brutality which revealed a hidden face of the Israeli army was revealed during the trial of the soldiers who abused the workers and forced one of them to drink their urine.

The event took place on September, 2004 when soldiers based at a military checkpoint in Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, stopped Sameeh Rahhal, 22, from Bethlehem, and Firas al-Bakry, 22, from Hebron, and other workers.

The soldiers claimed that the workers were ‘illegally’ staying in Jerusalem and decided to “punish them”. And took them to an abandoned hotel, which the army was using as a military post.

There, at the ‘hotel’ the abuse and cruelty of the soldiers was exposed on its highest level.

Sameeh said in his testimony that soldiers forced him to choose between having his hands and legs broken or drinking the soldiers' urine.

“Soldiers at first stopped us, along with dozens of workers, then they drew a lot on our card, randomly choosing two, and released the other workers”, Sameeh said.

Comment: Very definite shades of Nazi Germany

Sameeh and Firas were forced – in what Israeli soldiers called 'entertainment' – to choose one from three paper notes inside a box.

The “Game’ which soldiers chose to play, included three sorts of punishments; breaking hands, legs and drinking from bottles filled with the soldiers' urine.

“I told them I will not do it, and they attacked me and sprayed my face with one of the urine bottles, I pushed one soldier away from me, then six soldiers attacked me and pointed their M-16 rifles in my face, this time I had to choose between drinking urine and death”, Sameeh added.

He had to drink the urine until fell unconscious, after that soldiers left him there on the ground until he was found by other civilians near the checkpoint, and was transferred to the Abu Dees clinic, where his stomach was emptied of the urine, and he was then moved to Beit Jala Hospital.

An Israeli military court convicted Nier Levy, the commander of the unit, of abusing the workers and sentenced him to 14 months, and one year on parole.

Apparently, abusing a Palestinian in this inhuman way and degrading him to this level, is not worth more than this sentence the commander received.

The courts’ ruling read that Levy, along with other soldiers, identified as Ariel Simhayev, Alexander Meropolsky, Robert Schneider and Yussi Moshiashiviely, jumped over the two workers, clubbed them, then one of the soldiers inserted his rifle top in the mouth of Sameeh and said, “When I say I will shoot, I mean I will shoot”.

The soldiers also found a piece of soap on Sameeh’s bag, and forced him to ‘paint’ his face with it, and rub it with sand, as if he was washing himself.

Later on, the soldiers told him to jump from a high window, but he said that it’s too high, and then they ordered him to jump from a lower window, which caused several injuries, and forced him to drink the urine until he fell unconscious.

Sameeh was transferred to a clinic in Abu Dis, and received medication to clean his stomach, and then he was transferred to Bethlehem Governmental Hospital.

Simhayev was sentenced to 7 and a half months, Schneider was sentenced to eight months, Moshiashiviely was sentenced to four months in public service, ‘since he did not directly participate in the event’, but did not file a report against the soldiers who warned him not to, while Meropolsky was not sentenced yet.

Israeli soldiers, manning the random checkpoints throughout the occupied Palestinian territories often force Palestinians to go through such 'entertainment', as a civilian in Hebron suffered multiple fractures in his limbs when he was forced to go through the same choices Sameeh had to choose from.

Yet, military checkpoints remain there, in every part of Palestine, separating the cities from each other, and even from their surrounding villages which depend on these cities socially and economically.

On these checkpoint, residents were forced to undress, to dance, to stand in the son or rain for several hours, sick residents and even ambulances transferring urgent cases have to wait their until they are allowed to pass, yet they might not be allowed to.

Several residents died after Israeli troops prevented him from reaching hospitals, even unborn babies have to suffer from these checkpoints, and die, those infants were sentenced to death, even before they saw the light of this world, even before they managed to know what it is like, out there!

One of these cases was the fetus of Amnah Abdul-Karim Safadi, 19, from a village near Nablus; the baby died before being born because the mother was denied access to the hospital at Huwwara checkpoint. She was delayed for 5 hours before she could access Alitihad hospital in Nablus.

In what is likely the largest turnout against Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan to date in the U.S., thousands jammed the streets around Baruch College Sunday blasting the prime minister’s pullout plan.

In an effort to reach beyond the Jewish community to gain traction in the fight against Israel’s Gaza disengagement, a major pullout opponent has signed up a group of Bible Belt Baptist ministers who see the plan as an affront to God’s will to join some 100 American Jews on a sojourn to Israel next week.

The ministers hope to spend three days with the soon-to-be-vacated Jewish settlers in Gaza on a mission organized by Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind to depart on June 5.

“The Bible says that land belongs to the Jews,” the Rev. James Vineyard of the Windsor Hill Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, said in an interview. “The Lord, God of Israel, is not going to look favorably on the giving-away of one grain of sand.”

Rev. Vineyard last month organized a demonstration in Crawford, Texas, against disengagement when President George W. Bush hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He belongs to a coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists, Yedidim for Israel — or dear friends of Israel — that opposes all concessions to the Palestinians. Rev. Vineyard said he recently raised more than $50,000 to create a DVD for churches and synagogues explaining opposition to the Gaza plan.

After Hikind invited him to participate in the mission, Rev. Vineyard said he consulted with his friend, Benny Elon, a Knesset member who recently resigned as minister of tourism, and Elon encouraged him to go.

Also participating in the mission are Rev. Vineyard’s son, the Rev. Merle Vineyard, a missionary stationed on Africa’s Ivory Coast, as well as the Rev. Danny Dodson of Center, Texas; Pastor Cecil Ballard of Marion, Iowa; the Rev. Bryan Sharp of Pacific, Mo.; and the Rev. Joseph Buckly Consford.

The ministers’ move comes as thousands of Gaza pullout protesters jammed the streets Sunday around Baruch College on 23rd Street, where Sharon was addressing 1,500 Jewish leaders supporting the disengagement. It was the largest show of force to date by the anti-pullout movement in the United States, much of which is centered here.

Hikind said he was undaunted by the proselytizing activities of the Evangelical ministers, a source of concern to some Jewish organizations that are skeptical about fundamentalist Christian support for Israel.

“As far as I know they are not directly involved in [proselytizing],” Hikind said. “They are coming on this trip to show their support for Gush Katif [the settlers’ bloc in Gaza], and that’s the beginning or the end of the conversations I have had with him.”

Rev. Vineyard said that in 28 years at his 3,000-member congregation, he has “never had a Sunday when we haven’t had someone saved and somebody baptized.” But he said he had never baptized a Jewish proselyte.

“I don’t go to Israel to win souls,” he said. “I go to keep America from going down the tubes.

“If America causes Israel to give away Gush Katif, Israel goes down the tubes, and as goes Israel, so goes America.”

Rev. Vineyard said he believed that Sharon, about whom he had once spoken enthusiastically, has agreed to give up Gaza as part of a deal with left-wing politicians and judges in order to end an investigation into his campaign finances and business dealings that was aborted last year.

Speaking at Sunday’s protest rally, Hikind expressed frustration that more Jewish leaders had not signed on to his trip.

“It is easier for me to find Baptist ministers than rabbis,” he said in a booming voice. [...]

In addition to Hikind’s trip, Americans for a Safe Israel is planning a 10-day trip to Israel beginning Sunday to protest the disengagement. But it is not clear whether the Israeli army will allow the groups into Gaza after announcing that the area would be closed to non-residents after Passover.

PHILADELPHIA - One of the military's new wartime challenges is dealing with global media that can instantly spread around the world information that may be false or damaging to U.S. interests, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

The United States needs to respond to anti-American messages with greater agility and speed if it is to win the ideological struggle with Islamic extremists, Rumsfeld said in a speech to members of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

"We'll need to develop considerably more sophisticated ways of using these new means of communication that are now available to reach the many and diverse audiences," he said.

Rumsfeld didn't delve deeply into specifics in his brief talk with members of the civic group. But in the recent past, news outlets have broadcast messages from terrorist groups, or reported stories that have fueled rage against Americans in the Muslim world.

"This is really the first war in history that is being conducted in an era of multiple global satellite television networks, 24-hour news outlets with live coverage of terrorist attacks, disasters and combat operations," Rumsfeld said.

He said U.S. officials must also deal with "a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone" and "a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country."

The defense secretary was among those who complained earlier this month following deadly riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek published a story that U.S. interrogators desecrated a copy of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay. The magazine later retracted the story amid questions about its truthfulness.

If the administration of President George W. Bush fails to conduct a truly independent investigation of U.S. abuses against detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, foreign governments should investigate and prosecute those senior officials who bear responsibility for them, the head of the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International said Wednesday.

Speaking at the release of Amnesty's annual report, William Schulz charged that Washington has become "a leading purveyor and practitioner" of torture and ill-treatment and that senior officials should face prosecution by other governments for violations of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Among those officials, Schulz named Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet, and senior officers at U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

"If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal," said Schulz, who added that violations of the torture convention, which has been ratified by the United States and some 138 other countries, can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.

"If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them," he added. "The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as (former Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998."

Schulz also called on state bar associations to investigate administration lawyers who helped prepare legal opinions that sought to justify or defend the use of abusive interrogation methods for breach of their professional and ethical responsibilities.

He cited, in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney's general counsel, David Addington; Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes; and top officials in the Justice Department's Office of General Counsel, one of whom, Jay Bybee, has since been confirmed as a federal appeals court judge.

"A wall of secrecy is protecting those who masterminded and developed the U.S. torture policy," Schulz said. "Unless those who drew the blueprint for torture, approved it, and ordered it implemented are held accountable, the United States' once-proud reputation as an exemplar of human rights will remain in tatters."

Schulz's appeal for foreign governments to take the initiative coincided with the launch of a bipartisan drive endorsed by some 350 attorneys and legal scholars urging the administration to establish an independent commission to address the allegations of abuse and torture, including an assessment of the responsibility of senior administration officials and military officers.

"By establishing an independent bipartisan commission to fully investigate the issue of abuse of terrorist suspects," said John Whitehead, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Ronald Reagan administration, "Congress and the president have a unique opportunity to send a message to the rest of the world that the United States is committed to respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings, whether they are U.S. citizens or prisoners of war.” [...]

Since the abuses first came to light with the publication of photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib 13 months ago, the Pentagon has carried out dozens of reviews, courts-martial, and disciplinary proceedings. But virtually all of them have dealt only with the responsibility of the soldiers who carried out the abuses or their immediate superiors.

The failure to address the responsibility of officials and officers at the top of the command chain, particularly in light of the disclosure of memos which appeared to authorize at least some of the tactics carried out against detainees, has provoked repeated demands by human rights groups to appoint an independent commission to conduct a thorough examination. Last summer, the 400,000-lawyer American Bar Association joined Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in those demands.

But the Bush administration has rejected them, arguing that the Pentagon's own efforts to investigate and prosecute abuses were adequate. The Republican leadership in Congress has also paralyzed efforts by Democratic and some Republican lawmakers to create a commission.

The refusal to investigate translates into effective "tolerance" for torture and mistreatment, Schulz said, resulting not only in the spread of such practices but also in the destruction of U.S. credibility when it assails other countries, such as Syria or Egypt, for human rights violations.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for the U.S. government itself to use the very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other countries," he said. "When the U.S. government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?" [...]

Other documents released Wednesday by the ACLU provided accounts of beatings, planned suicide attempts, hunger strikes to protest mistreatment, and sexual assaults, including an incident in which a female guard fondled a detainee's genitals while he was held down by male guards.

"The United States government continues to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody," said ACLU director Anthony Romero. "If we are to truly repair America's standing in the world, the Bush administration must hold accountable high-ranking officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees.

In the week after the magazine's retraction, where is the comparable outrage over the military's cover-up of the "friendly fire" death of Pat Tillman? His family is angry, but why is there so little attention on the press and public also being misled? And where is a Scott McClellan lecture on ethics and credibility?

-- Where, in the week after the Great Newsweek Error, is the comparable outrage in the press, in the blogosphere, and at the White House over the military's outright lying in the coverup of the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman? Where are the calls for apologies to the public and the firing of those responsible? Who is demanding that the Pentagon's word should never be trusted unless backed up by numerous named and credible sources?

Where is a Scott McClellan lecture on ethics and credibility?

The Tillman scandal is back in the news thanks not to the military coming clean but because of a newspaper account. Ironically, the newspaper in question, The Washington Post -- which has taken the lead on this story since last December -- is corporate big brother to Newsweek.

The Post's Josh White reported this week that Tillman's parents are now ripping the Army, saying that the military's investigations into their son's 2004 "friendly fire" death in Afghanistan was a sham based on "lies" and that the Army cover-up made it harder for them to deal with their loss. They are speaking out now because they have finally had a chance to look at the full records of the military probe.

"Tillman's mother and father said in interviews that they believe the military and the government created a heroic tale about how their son died to foster a patriotic response across the country," White reported.

While military officials' lying to the parents have gained wide publicity in the past two days, hardly anyone has mentioned that they also lied to the public and to the press, which dutifully carried one report after another based on the Pentagon's spin. It had happened many times before, as in the Jessica Lynch incident.

Tillman was killed in a barrage of gunfire from his own men, mistaken for the enemy on a hillside near the Pakistan border. "Immediately," the Post reported, "the Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers." Tillman posthumously received the Silver Star for his "actions."

The latest military investigation, exposed by the Post earlier this month, "showed that soldiers in Afghanistan knew almost immediately that they had killed Tillman by mistake in what they believed was a firefight with enemies on a tight canyon road. The investigation also revealed that soldiers later burned Tillman's uniform and body armor."

Patrick Tillman Sr., the father -- a lawyer, as it happens -- said he blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting "outright lies" to the family and to the public. "After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," he told the Post. "They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," he said. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."

Mary Tillman, the mother, complained to the Post that the government used her son for weeks after his death. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall.

Newsweek made a bad mistake in its recent report on Koran abuse at Guantanamo. But it was a mistake, not outright lying. Yet the same critics who blasted the magazine -- and the media in general -- are not demanding that same contrition or penalties for anyone in the military.

One Newsweek critic after another has asked in the past week that the media come up with just one case where they erred on the side of making the military look good, not bad. One hopes the Tillman example takes care of that request, though there are, of course, many others.

It is worth looking back at how Steve Coll of the Washington Post last December described the early weeks of the Pentagon spin on Tillman:

"Just days after Pat Tillman died from friendly fire on a desolate ridge in southeastern Afghanistan," Coll wrote, "the U.S. Army Special Operations Command released a brief account of his last moments.

"The April 30, 2004, statement awarded Tillman a posthumous Silver Star for combat valor and described how a section of his Ranger platoon came under attack.

"'He ordered his team to dismount and then maneuvered the Rangers up a hill near the enemy's location,' the release said. 'As they crested the hill, Tillman directed his team into firing positions and personally provided suppressive fire. ... Tillman's voice was heard issuing commands to take the fight to the enemy forces.'

"It was a stirring tale and fitting eulogy for the Army's most famous volunteer in the war on terrorism, a charismatic former pro football star whose reticence, courage and handsome beret-draped face captured for many Americans the best aspects of the country's post-Sept. 11 character.

"It was also a distorted and incomplete narrative, according to dozens of internal Army documents obtained by The Washington Post that describe Tillman's death by fratricide after a chain of botched communications, a misguided order to divide his platoon over the objection of its leader and undisciplined firing by fellow Rangers.

"The Army's public release made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time it was issued, investigators in Afghanistan had already taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death.

"But the Army's published account not only withheld all evidence of fratricide, but also exaggerated Tillman's role and stripped his actions of their context. ... The Army's April 30 news release was just one episode in a broader Army effort to manage the uncomfortable facts of Pat Tillman's death, according to internal records and interviews."

The cat is out of the bag now.

It happened quite by accident, as most revelations do. And it is seen by most of the world as the most revolting of the American/Israeli atrocities in the past few years, although it's hard to prioritize that claim because of the level and frequency of barbaric acts that are committed on a regular basis by those affluent automatons who call themselves the good guys.

Yet everyone but the comatose American populace — blinded by its Orwellian media and stupefied by its demented diet of physical and mental poisons — can see it.

So permit me to spell it out for those cowardly people who say they're living in the freest country on Earth, but absolutely refuse in their silent ignorance to see the blood they're spilling. No country that condones deliberate torture for any reason can ever be trusted.

The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11. The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info, which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca, which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news. I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of the world, and highly recommend that you monitor them, too.

Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations.

I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship. Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist.

So who’s doing all these demented deeds? As if we didn’t know ....

Khadduri’s report went like this:

“A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.

The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated “hideous attack by foreign elements”.

The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along with the driver’s license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives."

If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass as just a story. But it wasn’t.

There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw American soldiers plant a bomb which shortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all to hear, he was hauled away, never to be seen again.

This story was reported on arguably the most authentic and riveting source of news from Iraq, the heart-rending "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq," which is compiled by someone known only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl. Again, recommended reading.

She recounts, "the last two weeks have been violent ....

The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations — bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.

The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics — several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later — apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.
But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It’s a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher’s shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn’t think much about the story — nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper — hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs — they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.

In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin — the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles… and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.

Then there was this one.

On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.

A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point. He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car. Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear. He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.

Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb.

"They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'.

I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story. They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance after failing to defeat it militarily.

Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir."

The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined in Frank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi 'Insurgents' and Global Terrorism" clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.

Morales writes:

Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.

We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others. Nor have we ever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitated one of the great slaughters in history. Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman. Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA.

Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion and destruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City. The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it.

There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat. That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Warren Buffett. These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately.

And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or their ignorance, support them.

The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understand how the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience, thrives on war and profits from the misery of others.

The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran — which some predict will happen in June — and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela.

The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding. By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in the homes of our choice.

So now that you know, what are you going to do about it? You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you.

Two weeks ago, a small, single-engine plane inadvertently strayed into the closed air space above Washington. The result was panic. Both the White House and the Capitol were evacuated, with police shouting "Run! Run!" at fleeing staffers and visitors. Senators and congressmen abandoned in haste the floors of their respective Houses. Various RIPs (Really Important People) were escorted to their Fuehrerbunkers. F-16s came close to shooting the Cessna down.

The whole episode would have been funny if it weren't so sad. As an historian, I could think of nothing other than the behavior of an earlier profile in courage, the Persian king Darius, at the battle of Issus. As the Roman historian Arrian described it,

"The moment the Persian left went to pieces under Alexander's attack and Darius, in his war chariot, saw that it was cut off, he incontinently fled – indeed, he led the race for safety … dropping his shield and stripping off his mantle – even leaving his bow in the war-chariot – he leapt upon a horse and rode for his life."

Not surprisingly, Darius' army was less than keen to fight to the death for its illustrious leader. As one British officer said, commenting on U.S. Marines' love of running for exercise, "We prefer our officers not to run. It can discourage the troops."

I suspect that more than a few of our soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, enjoying as they do a daily diet of IEDs, ambushes and mortarings, were less than amused at watching Washington flee from a flea. More importantly, what message does such easy panic send to the rest of the world? Osama bin Laden has whole armies trying to kill him, but as best I know he has shown no signs of fear. Here again we see the power of the moral level of war. In cultures less decadent than our own, few men are likely to identify with leaders who fill their pants at one tiny blip on a radar screen.

The episode also reveals what has become one of the main characteristics of America's "homeland defense:" a total inability to use common sense. We have already seen that in our airport security procedures, our de facto open borders immigration policy, and the idiotic "PATRIOT Act." Here, it seems that no one was willing to act on the obvious, namely that if a small plane is approaching Washington, it is probably because the pilot got lost (which pilots do frequently). Why? Because to bureaucracies what is important is not external reality but covering your own backside politically. Putting on shows serves that purpose well, even if the shows make us look like both fools and cowards.

There was also a message to the American people in the Cessna affair, and from a Fourth Generation perspective it was not a helpful one. The message was that the safety of the New Class in Washington is far more important than the safety of other Americans. As the first really serious terrorist incident is likely to show, America remains ill-prepared either to prevent or to deal with the consequences of a suitcase nuke or an induced plague. Not only will ordinary people die in large numbers, but it will be realized in retrospect that many of the deaths could have been avoided had the New Class cared about anyone other than itself. But, of course, it doesn't.

As I have said many times before, what lies at the heart of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state. In America, that crisis can only be intensified by any instance where the Washington elite draws a distinction between itself and the rest of the country. When the same people who have sent our kids to die in Iraq and left our borders wide open run in panic because of a Cessna, the American people get the message: Washington is "them," not "us." At some point, that gap may grow wide enough to swallow the state itself. Kings who become cabbages, like Darius, end up history's losers.

[...]
MR. McCLELLAN: That's all I have to update at this moment. And with that, I'll be glad to go to your questions.

Q: The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history --

Comment: Note that the emphasis in the above statement is not ours; it is included in the original White House transcript of the press conference.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we are -- that's where we currently --

Q: -- in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and --

Q: We're we invited into Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today --

Q: You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments --

Q: I'm talking about today, too.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

Q: Did we invade those countries?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve. [...]

The United States is condoning torture and abuse in the name of the war on terror, setting up a latter-day Gulag and creating a new generation of the "disappeared", according to Amnesty International.

A report from the human rights group accuses governments from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe of systematic and often brutal erosion of civil rights.

But its most scathing criticism is directed at the US, for using the 11 September attacks as an excuse to ignore international law, and for creating a network of supplicant nations to "sub-contract" illegal detention and mistreatment.

Britain is also criticised for attempting to put its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the reach of human rights laws and, on occasion, "blindly following the United States" down the path of abuse.

Amnesty criticises British ministers who have tried to justify the use of evidence in courts obtained through mistreatment. The organisation's secretary general, Irene Khan, said: "To argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages."

Comment: Well, sure - that's the idea. Bush and gang will be "royalty", and the rest of us will be their servants.

The international community failed to answer calls for help when mass abuse was taking place, Amnesty says.

In the Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations stopped short of describing the violence against civilians as genocide. Amnesty says the UN was "held hostage" to Russian arms-trade interests and Chinese oil interests when it debated Sudan.

There had been a similar lack of action in other parts of Africa, including Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the international community seemingly impotent to act against human rights abuse.

Ms Khan said the rest of the world took its lead from the US. "Guantanamo has become the Gulag of our time, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law."

The US Defence Department responded to the report, saying that "the detention of enemy combatants is not criminal in nature, but to prevent them from continuing to fight against the United States".

It said review tribunals "provided an appropriate venue for detainees to meaningfully challenge their enemy combatant designation", and added that abuse allegations were investigated.

A librarian in Washington state stood up to the FBI after it demanded internal patron information – and she won.

Joan Airoldi, director of the library district in Whatcom County, Wash., between Seattle and Bellingham, told her story in an op-ed piece in USA Today.

"It was a moment that librarians had been dreading," Airoldi writes in the opening of her column.

She explains that in June, an FBI agent stopped into one of the district's branches and requested a list of people who had borrowed a biography of Osama bin Laden.

"We said no," Airoldi wrote.

"We did not take this step lightly. First, our attorney called the local FBI office and asked why the information was important. She was told that one of our patrons had sent the FBI the book after discovering these words writt