"ICH" - - Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere Bitte. (Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat--literally. And, yes, of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in Nazi Germany.

No one ever forgets stench. Whether it is a long-forgotten encounter with a ripe skunk, or a ripe egg, or a ripe decomposing body, once one of those odors has been brain-documented, then even the slightest tinge of such an aroma pops back up immediately, along with the circumstances under which it first offended the nostrils.

And, that's what's happening now. I smell the long-forgotten skunk, the long-forgotten rot of fascism. What is happening all around can no longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived.

America quite literally saved my life. The love and gratitude deep in my heart for this country will never go away. But I'm scared now. Haunted by deep fear for the generations to come, who may wind up as I did – looking over their shoulders, scurrying for cover, mute with terror. And it hurts.

Think I'm some kinda elderly nut-job neurotically manufacturing dictatorship? Well, let's look at the 82 billion dollar defense bill passed just a few weeks ago, which (with a vote tally of 100 to 0) had the Real ID Act hidden inside it. This law allows a national identification process in which each and every person in the U.S.A. will be on computer.

This ID will be based on driver's license applications, although it isn't just for driving. Just like the infamous "Internal Passport" of Nazi Germany, no one will need it unless needing to fly, cash checks, apply for jobs, walk the streets, enter federal buildings -- or drive. As stated in TIME magazine on May 15, 2005 , "If you are a wealthy recluse with liquid assets, it doesn't concern you." Everyone else better watch out! Well, maybe that wealthy recluse had better watch out also. After all, he/she might be of a forbidden religion, or of suspicious racial origin.

Legal "ID Theft" and legal "illegal surveillance?"

"The Real ID Act links driver's licenses of all states, creating a data base including the private details of every single U.S. citizen. It mandates that your driver's license share a common machine-readable digital photo of you, all the better to track your every movement. It hands the federal government unfunded mandate power to dictate what data all states must collect for license holders, including everything from fingerprints to retinal scans". [1]

And, if you don't drive, you'll still need to submit to the national ID card. How else, after all, will the cop who doesn't like the shape of your face, or the fact that you are (God Forbid) wearing a turban get to arrest you? Yes, "Papiere Bitte" has come home to roost.

And, folks, that's only the beginning. More technically sophisticated techniques will be implemented as they occur. If the Nazis had had electronic surveillance, phone bugging and all else that the Patriot Act not only condones but advises, there would have been an even tighter grip on the populace.

After all, the Patriot Act is modeled directly after Gestapo methods: Those 3:00 AM home intrusions – without warrant or reason for arrest – will get our undesirable "domestic terrorists" straight to the nearest version of Guantanamo with no need for trial. The USA is currently building thirty seven "detention centers" nationwide, and they'll soon be filled with persons who protest too much, or are simply of the wrong nationality. After all, it worked very well in Germany, successfully eliminating Jews, Gypsies, and anyone willing to stand up, and refuse to "Hail Hitler."

What's next? Well, it's already happening: The Geneva Conventions were initiated after WW II to prevent the insane war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Nazi Germany from ever happening again. Now, with blithe disregard of all of the above, the U.S.A. not only institutes torture (not just physical, but deliberately mental and emotional) on its prisoners, but actually exports these folks to countries in which such torture is governmentally approved. What the U.S. domestic prison system has kept hidden for years, is now right out there for everyone to applaud. How long it will take before the prison guards tie together the legs of a woman in labor and then make bets on how long it will take her to die? After all, that's what guards did for fun in Nazi Germany. Abu Ghraib, anyone?

So, you ask, "If that's all true, why doesn't the media expose it all?" Now, that's such a classic example of Nazi strategy, it's almost funny. The Nazis took over the media, folks. No newspaper published a single sentence without governmental approval, and propaganda was fed to the populace instead of news. Sound familiar? A TIME magazine article, (April, 2005), gave illustrated examples of how the current administration administers this process.

And, last but certainly not least, the Nazis took over the German government in its entirety with one simple maneuver: They simply took over the courts. You know, like it's happening right now, today, even as we speak: Our filibuster was busted, and those neo-con activist judges are a-sittin' on the bench, ready to take over the Supreme Court. Because, once that Supreme Court is co-opted, hey, driver's license ID cards are gonna be the least of our worries. Ask me. I know!

[1] Jim Babka, Canyon Lake Week , Canyon Lake , TX 5-11-2005

WASHINGTON - Former FBI deputy director Mark Felt was hailed as a hero and denounced as a villain Wednesday after confessing to being the Watergate scandal's "Deep Throat" -- a revelation that took even President George W. Bush by surprise.

Felt's family and The Washington Post, which spearheaded press coverage of the Watergate cover-up in the early 1970s, confirmed that Felt was the celebrated anonymous source whose leaks helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt, now 91, told Vanity Fair in an article published that was the talk of the nation on Wednesday.

"All I can tell you is that it was a revelation that caught me by surprise," President Bush told reporters, summing up the feeling of many in the Washington establishment.

"For those of us who grew up, got out of college in the late '60s, the Watergate story was a relevant story," Bush said. "And a lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. And the mystery was solved yesterday."

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was appointed by Nixon as the US ambassador to NATO, in the 1970s, gave a guarded response when asked if he thought Felt had been right to leak confidential information.

"Well, I'm not in any judgmental mood," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. [...]

TOKYO - The head of Amnesty International hit back at US outrage over the group labelling Guantanamo Bay a "gulag" and challenged Washington to open the military-run detention center to outside inspections.

US leaders, including President George W. Bush, have said they were shocked that the human rights group accused the United States of running "a new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency".

The secretary general of London-based Amnesty International, Irene Khan, said the US response has lacked substance.

"Their response has been defensive and dismissive," she said during a visit to Japan. "We have not seen from them a more detailed response to the concerns we have expressed in our report.

"Our answer is simple. If that is so (that the allegations are unfounded), open up these detention centers. Allow us and others to visit them," she told a news conference on a visit to Tokyo.

"What is interesting is that we are actually getting response from the US government" after failing to do so for more than three years, Khan said. "We welcome an opportunity to sit down and have a debate with them on the issue."

Because the US military base in Guantanamo Bay for prisoners from the "war on terror" is located in Cuba, the Bush administration argues its inmates do not enjoy the same legal protections as those held inside the United States.

"We are concerned about allegations of torture that frequently emerge and are not independently and fully investigated," Khan said.

The Amnesty report came after allegations that interrogators at Guantanamo had desecrated the Muslim holy book the Koran to pressure prisoners.

Newsweek magazine retracted the report after it set off deadly riots in Afghanistan and stirred outrage in the Muslim world, saying its source had backed away from the allegation. [...]

Khan said the report was compiled mostly by American staff.

UNITED NATIONS - The UN Security Council agreed to extend the mandate of multinational forces in Iraq "until the completion of the political process."

Iraq had requested the council extend the mandate, which it did informally in a statement to the news media, without adopting a resolution.

The statement said council members "welcomed the progress made in recruiting, training and equipping Iraqi security forces and look forward to those forces progressively playing a greater role and ultimately assuming responsibility for Iraq's national security."

In an interview, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called on the United States and other countries to accelerate efforts to help the new government get on its feet.

"We need the cooperation of all our neighbors, of the international community, to accelerate this, the process of training, of equipment, of assistance, because that will shorten the mandate of the (multinational force)," Zebari said.

"We need the continued engagement of the United States in this process. For us this is very important. It's important to accelerate the training, the buid-up of these forces. I know there are many efforts to see things through being exerted, but speed is of the essence."

Zebari was scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Wednesday to discuss additional aid to his fledgling government.

NOTE: This video shows tough and shocking pictures and it's aimed to adult viewers only.

This video has been recorded in Falluja in early Janury, 2005, when the city was reopened to civilians after the American attack of November 8th, 2004 ("Operation Al-Fajr", i. e. "the dawn").

It's an important document since the city was closed to reporters at that moment. This video was handed over to the Italian weekly magazine Diario by the Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy of Falluja. Diario issued a broad enquire on Falluja battle on May 27th, 2005.

"Falluja-The day After" shows the total devastation of the Iraqi town, the corpses of the victims, the mass graves, the exhumation of many corpses by local rescue teams in order to try to recognize some of the victims. The last corpse shown in this video belongs to a 14 year old girl.

The video lasts 18 minutes and 20 seconds.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – a man notorious for his alleged ruthlessness – is suspected of direct involvement in the kidnap and beheading of several foreigners in Iraq – even of wielding the knife himself.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3483089.stm

A headline to conjure with no doubt, though clearly whoever writes this drivel needs to go back to journalism school and get a lesson in sentence construction. "Alleged" and "suspected", but nevertheless there's no doubt that he's "notorious", what for, his allegedness?

Fascinating the way the media operates. Note here that the words that will stick won't be his allegedness but his ruthlessness and his notoriety, that is, after all, entirely the objective of this piece of disinformation.

Now whether the BBC is leading or being led makes little difference. I'm not sure if people even care about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. What does count however, is the overall impression that's created, that is after all the objective, to deflect attention from the real issues through the creation of a mythological figure, the archetypal 'bogey-man', who comes and goes at will, seemingly impervious to capture. Able to slip across borders that are we are told, under surveillance 24/7, first he's here then he's there, he moves at the speed of light, the master of disguise, blah-blah-blah…

I caught a snatch of a news report on the BBC in the am (31/5/05) that talked of "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgency in Iraq", so the elusive little bugger has been promoted overnight just as it seemed he was about to be 'downsized'. The BBC of course, is not exactly au fait with the man, just with the bits and pieces of disinformation it gets fed by the army of 'experts in terror' who feed parasitically on the myth and for all I know, are instrumental in its creation, or least 'conduits' through which disinformation can be fed.

Just a 'throwaway' line but one that instils an entire set of assumptions about what's going on in Iraq. Now is this all self-delusion? After all, how do the news mavens think? What exactly goes on between thought and pen? The traditional argument is somewhat self-referential as it relies on the idea that somehow, 'news' gets onto the front page and hence becomes 'news' all on its little own-some, without any help from its friends, but of course 'news' has to be primed. Cues are handed out from the 'powers that be' that inform the corporate/state media what's what when it comes to what needs to be the focus of the 'news' at any given time.

Much depends on the fact that most of us are not informed about events, hence discontinuities in the storyline escape unnoticed and unchallenged, although this is changing rapidly, even if its only an escalating state of utter disbelief at what we are being told – or not told (eg see the latest MediaLens piece) due in no small part to the Internet and the collapsing credibility of the corporate/state media's lock on events.

As regular readers will know, I've been on Abu's case since he surfaced mysteriously in Colin Powell's Powerpoint presentation to the UN way back in February 2003.

Zarqawi's pedigree is fascinating and an object lesson in story continuity for any would-be scriptwriter looking for a job with the imperium, for any analysis of Abu Zarqawi's evolution as a character reveals serious discontinuities. Not that these bother the news organisations, as they regularly discard anything that doesn't 'fit' the current scenario but you know how the 'soapies' work, with characters often killed off for a variety of reasons, only to re-emerge at a later date without any apparent objections from the viewer as to how, exactly, they arose from the dead.

Scriptwriting 101 – Characterisation
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's name first came to be used by the imperium shortly and not coincidentally, just before the appearance of the notorious September 2002 UK government 'dodgy dossier', when a reference is made to him by George Bush[1], then again but more extensively, in Colin Powell's fictional account of Saddam's WMD before the UN in February 2003. Indeed, Powell devotes several paragraphs and Zarqawi even gets a fuzzy aerial shot of his 'HQ' in northern, Kurdish-controlled Iraq, where he is credited with being boss of 'Ansar al-Islam', variously described as an 'offshoot' or a 'competitor' of al-Qu-eda' (depending on which press report you read, that in turn depends on which parasitical 'expert' is selling them the drivel). Powell is effusive in his description of Zarqawi

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.

POWELL: You see a picture of this camp.

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch-image a pinch of salt-less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal. [2]

Aside from anything else, Powell's description of ricin is complete rubbish, relying not only on our general ignorance about ricin but crucially, the fact that such assertions are unlikely to be challenged by the media. But who bothers about such details when viewing a soapie? It's the overall effect that's important. Later, in March of 2003, the camp (actually a small collection of huts) was flattened by US bombing, to such a degree that it was unrecognisable as a camp.[3] A strange event given as how the US had known about this 'al-Qu-eda HQ' for a considerable period of time.

Over the next few months, bits and pieces about Zarqawi emerge but it's not until after the occupation of Iraq by the 'coalition of the killing' that we start to read more about Zarqawi but even then, who he actually is and his relationship to al-Qu'eda is at best, sketchy and fraught with contradictions but as with all fictional, larger-than-life characters, it's best not to be too specific, let the consumer's imagination fill in all the blank sections, merely suggest, well, that's he's evil, ruthless, cold-blooded, without a conscience, well you know the sort of thing…

We learn that he is Jordanian and that he was a naughty boy at school and a bit of drunk (clearly not a devout Muslim at the time), though even here, we are totally reliant on the Jordanian secret service for these tidbits. He is variously described as being either the murderer of CIA operative, Foley, an opponent of the Jordanian monarchy, out to kill Israelis, Osama's right-hand man, his competition, take your pick. He did however spend some years in a Jordanian prison before being released under an amnesty, although again, what he did time for is not clear (one account says it was for a bombing, another simply for his opposition to the Jordanian regime) and that then he did a bunk to Afghanistan where he was allegedly trained by al-Qu'eda, then hopped it to Pakistan before or after either falling out with Osama or being sent to Iraq by Osama, take your pick.

Early US reports are contradictory about his relationship to Osama, but this is the entire point about keeping Zarqawi's activities deliberately vague, you can't be too specific, else someone will actually be able to follow a lead and expose the actual nature of his activities, if any.

At some point it's alleged that he a lost a leg due to US actions in Afghanistan or perhaps when they flattened the Ansar al-Islam HQ in northern Iraq but given the speed at which he allegedly moves around the world, perhaps he found it? He has also – in line with his soapie credentials – died and been reborn.

Of course, Zarqawi's actual role was to establish a connection between Osama/al-Qu'eda and Saddam Hussein and given that back in February 2003, Zarqawi was an unknown quantity, what better character was there than this non-entity to establish the connection with?

Once the idea has been planted, all that is necessary is to feed the media with a variety of 'tidbits' about the man, the more contradictory they are, the better, it makes him all the more mysterious and, easy to speculate about.

The Christian Science Monitor story of October 2003, 'The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam' is one of the more notorious pieces of disinformation about Zarqawi, full of all manner of assumptions and accusations but without a shred of supporting evidence to back up a single claim by the author, Scott Peterson[4].

He tells us for example,

Ansar [al-Isam] was once part of a long-term Al Qaeda dream to spread Islamic rule from Afghanistan to Kurdistan and beyond. But that idea was embryonic at best, and when US forces attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Al Qaeda support for Ansar dried up.

Yet virtually all of Peterson's information comes from the US-backed PUK or Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, long a recipient of US funding and support, so anything they say has to be viewed with suspicion, not to mention its dealings with Saddam.[5] In fact the leader of PUK, Jalal Talabani, now 'prime minister' of Iraq, did deals with just about everybody![6]

The rest is up to the media and it's here that we see the pivotal role the media plays in promulgating the myth, or should we say myths, starting with Newsweek Magazine's allegations about Zarqawi's role in the 'beheading' of the American Nicholas Berg, about which I've written before, another piece of disinformation that did the rounds, even ending up on the front page of the Independent. Subsequent research revealed that the Zarqawi/Berg connection had but a single, unverifiable source that was at least one year old.

What is amazing is just how many different stories there are about Zarqawi, most of which present entirely contradictory accounts about his life and activities, not that this bothers the media which is all too happy to turn this one time drunk and petty thief (Jordanian source) into Al-Qu'eda's #2 man in Iraq (US government source) and now, we are told by the BBC, the actual leader of the resistance in Iraq. Just for good measure, Rumsfeld actually denied at one time, that Zarqawi was of any consequence at all, as did the CIA.[7]

Take for example Zarqawi's alleged base in Falluja, the primary reason we were told, as to why the US demolished the city of 300,000 and slaughtered who knows how many thousands of innocent people. At one point, the US were alleging that Zarqawi directed the entire defence of Falluja by telephone! A not inconsiderable military achievement. Perhaps it was a videophone, so as he scooted (hopped?) around the country, he directed fire? Such assertions depend entirely on the reader's lack of knowledge about how, exactly, battles are fought.

We read this past week that he is now in Syria, Iran, back in Pakistan, possibly licking his wounds (wound?) somewhere in Iraq; that he had passed the baton on to his #2 man. So where do all these stories actually come from?

Scanning the stories, we find that none have an actual source, it's all pure supposition, using the classic phrase, 'it is alleged' but by whom we are never told unless it's yet another unverified source.

Then there's the issue of the Websites that conveniently tell us exactly what Zarqawi is not only thinking but also doing, presumably because he's so confident of success in carrying out his various and sundry missions around the planet, that he wants to give the US a sporting chance at catching him? What a sporting fellow Mr Zarqawi must be to be so very helpful.

Is it not all so transparent as to be utter nonsense? Apparently not, because this doesn't stop the home of 'objective' news, the BBC, repeating all this rubbish ad infinitum, with the able assistance of a raft of 'terror experts', who are making a fine living out of Mr Zarqawi thank you very much.

Typically, a BBC story purporting to be an "analysis" of Zarqawi tells us

But trends like the increase in suicide bombings in Baghdad may be evidence of growing collaboration between the foreign elements and local Iraqi insurgents.[8]

Note the use of the phrase "may be" but then again may be it's not. And for good measure, the sentence leaves the impression that the resistance is led by "foreign elements". This particular piece dated 26 May, is full of may be's

It remains unclear whether he is seriously wounded, whether he is in Iraq or elsewhere, and whether he has been replaced at least temporarily as leader of his group.

Unclear instead of a may be. Well they can't keep saying may be can they. And in fact, it's not clear whether he has actually been wounded at all (or for that matter, is actually even in Iraq).

He is blamed for many of the most deadly attacks and is the only widely-recognised leader in the insurgency.

Blamed by whom? And who recognizes him as the leader of the insurgency? Why the BBC of course. The use of such stock phrases like "he is blamed" are classic propaganda lines, for they leave an impression of veracity without actually having to offer a single piece of evidence.

The foreign fighters whom Abu Musab al-Zarqawi leads may be only a portion of the total.

May be again. It's all complete rubbish, based on nothing except pure supposition that ultimately serves to obscure the fact of the complete failure of the occupying forces to crush the resistance.

They have targeted and captured senior Zarqawi associates, they say, and believe they may even have got close to the man himself.

They say is of course, the Americans. Well what else should they say? And the BBC calls this objective, even-handed reporting!

The piece ends by saying

That may be, as the Americans contend, a sign of increasing desperation.

Or it may be further evidence that the insurgency is stronger and more sophisticated than US commanders and intelligence have calculated.

It may be an invasion from outer space by one-legged, aliens. Take for example, this BBC news report, also dated 26 May

The denial [concerning Zarqawi's wounding] was posted on a website often used by al-Qaeda after a statement appeared on a lesser known website saying that a new chief would take control while Zarqawi recovers from his wounds.

The authenticity of either statement cannot be verified.[9]

First it tells us authoritatively, that the Website is used by Al Qu-eda but then it tells us that the statement cannot be verified, so how does it know that it's an al-Qa'eda statement in the first place? It does this by implication, justifying one supposition with another, that the Website is "often used by al-Qaeda" though it offers no evidence to support this claim any more than it can substantiate the Website's claim that a "new chief" will take control.

Ultimately of course, it serves to mask the disaster that is the occupation and to cover up the fact that the Iraqi people are not too happy at having their country blown apart, its infrastructure destroyed, hundreds of thousands of its people killed and its natural resources ripped off by gang of heavily armed pirates.

So in spite of thousands of 'news' reports about Zarqawi, all of which are essentially self-referential in that not one single piece of actual evidence backs up any of the claims made in them, the overall impression created is that of a vast body of knowledge about the man and his alleged actions, that through the sheer volume of reports creates the impression of credibility. After all, if news outlet after news outlet repeats the same assertions, the overall impression is one of credibility.

One has to ask the question why do the corporate/state media participate in such a gigantic fraud, to which one can only answer that the media shares the same ideological viewpoint as the state's and that its objective is to project a view of the world that supports the state's view. It serves to obscure the causes of events through the creation of such mythological characters as Zarqawi who then becomes the 'cause' of the occupation's failure and of the Iraqi peoples resistance to the occupation.

Moreover, it serves to dehumanise the Iraqi people by transforming them into passive victims who can only stand idly by whilst they are manipulated by 'outside' forces over which they have no control, a tactic long used to rationalise invasion and occupation of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador et al. That we are only now coming to grips with the 'big lie' shows just how powerful is the media's grip on reality through the invention of archetypes like Zarqawi.

Notes

1. 'The World's Most Dangerous Terrorist', June 23, 2004. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5280219/site/newsweek
2. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html and 'No sign of poison in Ansar'. www.post-gazette.com/world/20030216ansar0216p4.asp
3. 'The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam'. www.csmonitor.com/2003/1016/p12s01-woiq.html
4. ibid
5. 'US Met with Kurdish Factions On Overthrow of Hussein'. www.why-war.com/news/2002/04/23/usmetwit.html
See also www.iwsolidarity.com/stop.htm for PUK murders of Kurdish women members of WcP or the Worker communist Party of Iraq. PuK, which fought a long-running war with its main rival the PDK, even did a deal with the Ba'ath regime prior to Saddam's overthrow.
6. See Dilip Hiro's book, 'Desert Shield, Desert Storm' and Iraq's 'New President Jalal Talabani: Ally of CIA, Iranian Intelligence and Saddam Hussein' www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343226
7. 'Rumsfeld questions Saddam-Bin Laden link'. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3715396.stm
See also 'Undeterred by CIA report, O'Reilly stood firm on "smoking gun" Zarqawi; urged Rumsfeld to watch The Factor'. mediamatters.org/items/200410070007
8. 'Analysis: Zarqawi's insurgency'. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4583005.stm
9. 'Iraq backs Zarqawi wounded claim' news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4581801.st

WASHINGTON, May 31 (AFP) - The United States indicated Tuesday it wants to work with new French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, yet suggested France's opposition to the Iraq war when he was foreign minister had not been forgotten.

"We look forward to working with the prime minister and his government, when it's named," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Asked about de Villepin leading opposition to the war in Iraq, chiefly at the United Nations, Boucher suggested the United States had not yet turned a page on that strained phase in Franco-American relations.

"We all know that when he was foreign minister, we had a variety of actions with him, and we know him from those days," Boucher said.

"I'm not going to comment on the new French prime minister," he added. "It's up to the French government to decide who they want in their government. They're doing so now."

President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, "We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists."

Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not.

As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died.

The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28.

Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, "I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them."

Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Perhaps all presidents' remarks in military graveyards are by nature self-serving. But few have been so callow as the president's using the deaths of U.S. troops in his unjustified war as justification for its continuance.

BAGHDAD : A mortar attack in Baghdad killed four people, including three children, while Turkish Kurds sheltering in the north of the war-wracked country held out an olive branch to Ankara. "Four people, including three children, were killed and another child wounded when a mortar shell fell in Dura," a southern residential neighborhood, an interior ministry source said.

The attack was one of the first following the bloody month of May when an estimated 672 Iraqis died in attacks, according to figures released by the government.

An earlier attack at a Baghdad airport checkpoint wounded 15 Iraqis, as the government said its major anti-insurgent operation in the city was finally reaping dividends. [...]

At least 15 Iraqis have been injured after a bomber targeted US forces, exploding a vehicle near the heavily guarded checkpoint leading to Baghdad International Airport.

The bomb went off just after 9am (local time) on Wednesday but no soldiers were injured, US military spokeswoman Captain Kelly Lewis said.

Iraqi police Captain Talib Thamir added that the bomber, who died in the blast, was targeting a checkpoint that is mainly manned by private security guards backed by US troops.

A security official at western Baghdad's main Yarmouk Hospital said earlier that three Iraqi Airways employees were wounded.

One of the victims, Ghassan Yassin, said he suffered facial wounds as a result of the blast.

"Me and some colleagues at Iraqi Airways were waiting in line when we saw a speeding car, then we heard a big explosion," Yassin said. "The next thing I realised is that my car was on fire. I got out through the window after the doors jammed due to the explosion."

Baghdad International has often come under mortar attack, and vehicles travelling on the road leading to it from downtown Baghdad are routinely targeted by bombs.

Poisoned

In an unrelated development, an Iraqi soldier died from poisoning and nine others were in critical condition after they ate free watermelon handed out at a checkpoint in northern Iraq, police said on Wednesday.

"A vendor offered a poisoned watermelon on Monday to Iraqi soldiers manning checkpoints between Shorgat and Kiyara," said police Colonel Fares Mahdi.

"One soldier died and nine others who were rushed to the hospital are in critical condition."

Police were searching for the assassin in what is thought to be the first such attack against Iraqi security forces.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber walked into a mosque during the funeral of a Muslim cleric and blew himself up Wednesday, killing 20 people, including Kabul's police chief, and wounding 42 others.

The attack was the deadliest in Afghanistan since a surge in violence began in March, casting doubt on U.S. claims that it is stabilizing the country and reinforcing fears that militants here are copying the tactics of those in Iraq.

Hundreds of mourners were crowded inside the mosque for the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz in the main southern city of Kandahar when the bomber struck.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the assault as an "act of cowardice by the enemies of Islam and the enemies of the peace of Afghan people" and ordered a high-level investigation.

Parts of the bomber's body were found and Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai said he belonged to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

"The attacker was a member of al-Qaida. We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab," Sherzai said. "We had an intelligence report that Arab al-Qaida teams had entered Afghanistan and had been planning terrorist attacks." [...]

UNITED NATIONS - A recent maneuver by Saudi Arabia to limit international inspection of its atomic capabilities has raised suspicions that the kingdom could be preparing to go nuclear.

The Saudis are calling for the implementation of a provision of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that allows countries that are not suspected of having nuclear aspirations to forgo heavy inspection of their facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. [...]

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 hesitant to admit: "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.

"First, the soldiers stopped us, along with dozens of workers, then they drew lots with our identity cards, randomly choosing two, and released the other workers", Sameeh said.

Sameeh and Firas and 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 would 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, threatening him with death, is not even grounds for a demotion.

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'. A civilian in Hebron recently 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 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.

At each of these checkpoint, residents are often forced to undress, to dance, to stand in the sun or rain for several hours. Sick residents and even ambulances transporting patients in urgent conditions have to wait until they are allowed to pass, and are often blocked from passing through at all.

Over 100 patients have died at checkpoints since 2000, when Israeli troops prevented them from reaching hospitals. Even unborn babies have to suffer from these checkpoints, and die, those infants have been sentenced to death, even before seeing 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.

BEIJING - U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez kicked off his first official trip to China on Thursday by saying that the country's rampant counterfeiting of American products was the top issue bedevilling trade ties.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated that global trade in fake and pirated goods, anything from designer dresses to DVDs, costs the American economy $250 billion each year.

"Intellectual property rights are not up for negotiation, and frankly, abuse of intellectual property rights is not acceptable," Gutierrez told businessmen on his first visit to Beijing since becoming commerce chief in February.

"Intellectual property rights violations are a crime and we don't believe we should be negotiating crimes with our trading partners."

Industry groups estimate that U.S. music, movie and software companies lose up to $3.8 billion a year in China from sales of pirated copies, a headache for firms like entertainment giant Walt Disney Co. and software titan Microsoft Corp. [...]

U.S. imports of some types of clothing from China have risen dramatically since Jan. 1, when a decades-old system of quotas on developing countries' textile exports expired.

In response to the increases, Washington last month announced it would temporarily restrict imports of products such as pants, shirts and underwear. [...]

Move over, Brazil. Step aside, China. Make room for Israel, king of the copyright-violation hill. US Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky announced in mid-February that sanctions could soon be imposed on the Middle Eastern nation for what the State Department calls piracy of "epidemic proportions."

The US ambassador to Israel, Edward Walker, suggested earlier in the month that trade sanctions might be applied to Israel to try to rein in the wholesale piracy of American films and CDs. "Israel's fundamental interest must be protecting intellectual property rights," Walker warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to Barshevsky, Israel is among the world's worst copyright offenders, alongside China, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bulgaria. The US has found it difficult to affect economic policies and internal procedures in Israel due to strong support for the nation among members of both the US Congress and the American entertainment industry.

The piracy problem has been made worse in the past two years by the Israeli Knesset, the nation's governing body, which weakened what the Los Angeles Times called "already feeble copyright laws." The situation is compounded by the fact that some illicit Israeli-owned duplicating plants are in the West Bank area controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The US Trade Representative's office is required to submit a yearly report to Congress on the state of intellectual property rights worldwide. The office is also empowered to impose sanctions against violators.

PARIS, June 1 - President Jacques Chirac has asked his European Union counterparts to "take the time needed to analyse the consequences" of France's rejection of the EU constitution, in a letter released by his office Wednesday.

"It would be appropriate to take the time needed to analyse the consequences of France's vote for the union," Chirac wrote to his 24 EU counterparts, saying the process should begin at an EU summit later this month in Brussels.

Nearly 55 percent of French voters on Sunday rejected the EU constitution, which aims to streamline decision-making in the expanded bloc. The Netherlands went to the polls on Wednesday, with a "no" vote expected there too.

"Above and beyond what this decision implies for my own country, I am aware of the consequences that this situation imposes on France's partners and on the Union itself," Chirac wrote.

"It is up to all the other member states to express themselves on this treaty," the French leader said, suggesting that the ratification process should continue despite France's historic "no" vote. So far, nine EU countries have approved the treaty - Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

As the constitution must be ratified by all 25 EU states to take effect, observers suggested that the treaty would stop dead in its tracks following the French rejection, but EU officials insist the process will move forward.

Chirac insisted that France's repudiation of the EU charter "does not at all call into question France's deep and historic commitment to the construction of Europe," adding: "France is a founding member of the Union."

The 72-year-old leader - who on Tuesday appointed Dominique de Villepin as France's new prime minister, replacing Jean-Pierre Raffarin in the wake of the EU vote disaster - said Paris would maintain its position within the bloc.