The other day Bob Geldolf announced that artists participating in the Live8 concerts should stay away from criticizing President Bush.

Hmmm.

In a moment of fantasy, we wondered what kind of song we'd want to sing in those circumstances, the gauntlet having been thrown down as it were. They're a few things we'd like to say to Mr. Bush and his colleagues in Washington, not that he'd listen to us -- the Washington Post article about our Pentagon Strike flash didn't change anything and we're certain it caught the eye of the White House -- and to Mr. Geldolf who seems to be living in a lala land where mass demonstrations have an effect on the Bush administration. Didn't the millions of people in the streets prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq demonstrate clearly enough that Bush gets his orders elsewhere?

Well, the news today shows there ain't no hope for Geldolf's wishful thinking as Bush has declared he's going to put the US first, but we have never been enamoured with wishful thinking, preferring to look the world in the face and see it as objectively as possible.

Hence, this song:

You lied words & music by Signs of the Times

You told the world Saddam had chemical bombs
To kill us in our homes, and on our farms
You said he sent his men into the heavens
big planes crashing down, September 11

You lied, You lied,
People died, When Bush lied

I've got some questions, wipe that smirk off your face
Betraying your people, that's a real disgrace
See I'm having a hard time finding that plane
that you said hit the Pentagon, bursting into flames
Vapourising the aircraft, didn't leave no remains
But the bodies appear not to burn quite the same

More lies Yeah, yeah, more lies
America died, When Bush lied

And talk about mir'cles, did you see how they fell,
the three towers in New York, those charges worked well
Flattened out in a straight line, just like it was planned
Did you think we were so stupid that we wouldn't understand
And it's a pity about the folks there on Flight 93,
Just as they took back control, you blew them to smithereens

You lied, You lied
Heroes died, when Bush lied

You say Osama is living in a place you have traced
But you don't go and get him, it seems such a waste
Could it be it's because he's still one of your men
A C-I-A asset just like he was then
He endorsed your campaign in a last minute pitch
Is he just one more man who has gotten quite rich

From your lies, Your lies
Freedom died, from your lies

How about those Israelis dancing to their success,
On the rooftops of Jersey, they created a mess
So you sent them back home with a slap on the wrist
Told the cops not to bother, 'cause they don't exist

It's a lie, You lied
Justice died, when you lied

Now people are dying through your crimes in Iraq
You've killed more than Saddam, though you don't care to keep track
Cause they're only some Arabs in a faraway land
That Yahweh has promised to his chosen band
While Sharon and his cronies pull on your strings
When he opens his mouth your whole government sings

His lies, His lies
Palestinians die, With Bush lies

Next time you talk to your God, I've got a question for him
What side is he on or does it change on a whim'
There's a whole lot of people, suff'rin here in his name
What kind of pyscho is he that he's playing this game
It sounds more like the devil is guiding your hand
Destruction and death are the plagues of the land

of your lies, your lies
Children die, When Bush lies

You see, Mr President, there's something amiss
Two elections you lost, but you overcame this
By rigging the vote, not counting the blacks
You've ensured two full terms, the dry drunk is back
And now they're changing the laws to get you a third
The brown shirts are charging at the front of the herd

of your lies, your lies
Democracy dies, When Bush lies

The question remains what can we do about this
Most people refuse to consider this list
They're lost in illusion, can't recognise proof
so we offer this song to all who stand for the truth

No more lies, No more lies
Must we all die, Because of your lies

No more lies, No more lies
Must we all die, Because of your lies

Your lies...

copyright 2005 Signs of the Times

Not having the forum of a world-wide TV broadcast, we turned to what we do have, the Internet. With the help of our friends at Away With the Fairys, we offer you this song as our little gift to America on this Fourth of July. Fortunately, we don't think the song will change anything except maybe get a few people tapping their feet.

Streaming audio version

Download (Right click and "Save link as...") (8 megs)

Let us know what you think.

The video camera pans across Hassan an-Ni'ami's body as it is washed in the mosque for burial. In life he was a slender, good-looking man, usually dressed in a dark robe and white turban, Imam at a mosque in Baghdad's Adhimiya district and a senior official of the Muslim Clerics Association.

When I first interviewed him a year ago he was suspected of contacts with the insurgency. Certainly he supported resistance to US forces.

More recently, an-Ni'ami had dropped out of sight. Then, a little over a month ago, relatives say, paramilitary police commandos from 'Rapid Intrusion' found him at a family home in the Sha'ab neighbourhood of northern Baghdad. His capture was reported on television as that of a senior 'terrorist commander'. Twelve hours later his body turned up in the morgue.

What happened to him in his 24 hours in captivity was written across his body in chapters of pain, recorded by the camera. There are police-issue handcuffs still attached to one wrist, from which he was hanged long enough to cause his hands and wrists to swell. There are burn marks on his chest, as if someone has placed something very hot near his right nipple and moved it around.

A little lower are a series of horizontal welts, wrapping around his body and breaking the skin as they turn around his chest, as if he had been beaten with something flexible, perhaps a cable. There are other injuries: a broken nose and smaller wounds that look like cigarette burns.

An arm appears to have been broken and one of the higher vertebrae is pushed inwards. There is a cluster of small, neat circular wounds on both sides of his left knee. At some stage an-Ni'ami seems to have been efficiently knee-capped. It was not done with a gun - the exit wounds are identical in size to the entry wounds, which would not happen with a bullet. Instead it appears to have been done with something like a drill.

What actually killed him however were the bullets fired into his chest at close range, probably by someone standing over him as he lay on the ground. The last two hit him in the head.

The gruesome detail is important. Hanging by the arms in cuffs, scorching of the body with something like an iron and knee-capping are claimed to be increasingly prevalent in the new Iraq. Now evidence is emerging that appears to substantiate those claims. Not only Iraqis make the allegations. International officials describe the methods in disgusted but hushed tones, laying them at the door of the increasingly unaccountable forces attached to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior.

The only question that remains is the level of the co-ordination of the abuse: whether Iraq is stumbling towards a policy of institutionalised torture or whether these are incidents carried out by rogue elements.

Six months ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) laid out a catalogue of alleged abuses being applied to those suspected of terrorism in Iraq and called for an independent complaints body in Iraq.

But as the insurgency has grown hotter, so too, it appears, have been the methods employed in the dirty counter-insurgency war.

To add to HRW's allegations of beatings, electric shocks, arbitrary arrest, forced confessions and detention without trial, The Observer can add its own charges These include the most brutal kinds of torture, with methods resurrected from the time of Saddam; of increasingly widespread extra-judicial executions; and of the existence of a 'ghost' network of detention facilities - in parallel with those officially acknowledged - that exist beyond all accountability to international human rights monitors, NGOs and even human rights officials of the new Iraqi government.

What is most shocking is that it is done under the noses of US and UK officials, some of whom admit that they are aware of the abuses being perpetrated by units who are diverting international funding to their dirty war.

Hassan an-Ni'ami may well have been a terrorist. Or he may have had knowledge of that terrorism. Or he may have been someone who objected too loudly to foreign troops being in Iraq. We will never know. He had no opportunity to defend himself, no lawyer, no trial. His interrogation and killing were a breach of international law.

And it is not only the case of an-Ni'ami but others too, all arrested by units of the Ministry of the Interior, many of whom were tortured and subsequently killed. Post-mortem images show a dozen or so farmers from the insurgent hotbed of Medayeen who were apparently seized by police as they slept in one of Baghdad's markets and whose bodies were discovered on a rubbish dump in shallow graves to the north of the city. Like an-Ni'ami, their bodies also bore the marks of extensive torture before execution, most with a bullet to the head.

The face of the first body is blackened by strangulation or asphyxiation. Another has bruises to his forehead where he was been hit repeatedly with something heavy. Yet another, his hands still tied with cord, has been punched in the eye and had his ankle fractured. Yet another shows signs of burning similar to an-Ni'ami's. The last two have identical puncture wounds, fist-width apart, suggesting the use of a spiked knuckle-duster.

Then there is Tahar Mohammed Suleiman al-Mashhadani, seized from the Abu Ghraib neighbourhood from early prayers outside a mosque with a number of other men, again by paramilitary police from Rapid Intrusion. When his body was found by family members in the morgue - 20 days after his arrest - he had been tortured almost beyond recognition.

These are not isolated cases. For what is extraordinary is the sense of impunity with which the torture, intimidation and murder is taking place. It is not just in Baghdad. In the majority Shia south, far from the worst ravages of the insurgency, there are also emerging reports consistent with the abuses in the capital.

If there is a centre to this horror, it is Baghdad's Ministry of the Interior, and the police commando units that operate from there.

The ministry is a strange, top-heavy building, set apart in an area of open ground off the highway. Its entrance is guarded by concrete blast-walls and endless checkpoints on the dusty road that leads to its crowded reception.

I came here almost exactly a year ago, two days after sovereignty had been handed back to Iraq's interim government. The floors were occupied by civil servants and blue-uniformed officers of the Iraqi Police Service. It was easy to wander in.

These days the ministry is a very different place. The dusty hinterland that leads to it is busy with the new paramilitary forces that most often have been accused of human rights abuses - the Rapid Intrusion brigades, most notoriously the Wolf Brigade of 'Abu Walid'. There has been no investigation or official findings over the allegations.

It was here - 12 months ago - that there was the first intimation that something was going seriously wrong. On the second day of Iraq's new government, US military police were forced to raid the Guest House to 'rescue' dozens of alleged criminals, scooped up in a sweep of the city, who were being subjected to beatings and forced confessions of their crimes.

Back then officials were happy to justify the violence - and angry at the US intervention. Criminals and terrorists expected a good beating, one official said, proud of his 100 per cent confession rate.

Now it is impossible to reach those officials as they shelter on heavily guarded floors. There are no American MPs to come to the aid of those locked in the cells.

A year ago, the worst violence was meted out in the Guest House. Now officials say the abuse happens on the seventh floor, where those suspected of terrorist connections are brought.

One of those held at the ministry for 'terrorist interrogation' is 'Zaid'. It is not his real name. Since his release, the 25-year-old Sunni from the western suburbs of Baghdad lives in fear of being brought back.

A taxi driver, the college graduate stopped his car in March to buy food in a market. When a bomb exploded nearby, he went to look at the damage. Arrested at the scene by soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard, he says he was handed over to the Ministry of the Interior.

At first, said Zaid, he was put in a room, on the seventh floor, measuring 10ft by 12ft, with 60 others. He was crammed in so tightly he could not sit. In some respects Zaid was lucky. Early in his detention, a Ministry of Justice official appeared and, furious at the conditions, demanded the men be moved. 'He said, "You can't have this many people in a room this size," so they moved us to somewhere with more air and fed us. He asked too whether there had been any beatings and some said yes.'

For his part, Zaid says he was hung by his arms, but not for so long that it caused any permanent damage. His ordeal was largely to be subjected to threats of violence as up to eight guards circled him during his interrogation. But Zaid claims he witnessed what happened to men brought from another detention facility, a barracks run by the Wolf Brigade, who were kept in the same area as Zaid until his parents paid a hefty bribe for his release.

'I saw men from Samarra [another insurgent stronghold] and from Medayeen. Some appeared to have wounds to their legs,' he recalled. 'There were others who could not use their spoon properly. They had to hold it between their palms and move their heads to the spoon.'

His month in the ministry terrified Zaid. If the police came again for him, he said, he would rather throw himself off a balcony than go back. Zaid is not the first detainee to accuse the police of taking bribes for the release of prisoners. It is a common charge, as are descriptions of prisoners being brought from other, less accountable, interrogation facilities where the worst of the violence is taking place.

What is most important about Zaid's testimony is that it makes clear a link exists between the Ministry of Interior and the torture being conducted out of sight at other centres. Iraqi and international officials named several of these centres, including al-Hadoud prison in the Kharkh district of Baghdad.

A second torture centre is said to be located in the basement of a clinic in the Shoula district, while the Wolf Brigade is accused of running its own interrogation centre - said to be one of the worst - at its Nissor Square headquarters. Other places where abusive interrogations have been alleged include al-Muthana airbase and the old National Security headquarters.

'Abu Ali', a 30-year-old Sunni scooped up in a mosque raid in central Baghdad, was taken to the latter for a week in mid-May where he says he was beaten on his feet, subjected to hanging by his arms and, when he angered his guards by refusing to confess, threatened with being sat on 'the bottle' - being anally penetrated.

It is not just in Baghdad. Credible reports exist of Arab prisoners in Kirkuk being moved to secret detention facilities in Kurdistan, while other centres are alleged in Samarra, in the Holy Cities and in Basra in the south.

'There are places we can get to and know about,' said one Iraqi official. 'But there are dozens of other places we know about where there is no access at all.'

'It is impossible to keep track of detentions, and what is happening to people when they are taken away,' complained one foreign official involved in trying to building Iraq's respect for human rights.

'On top of that we have a whole culture that is permitting torture. The impression is the judiciary are simply not interested in responding to the issue of human rights. It is depressing.'

But it is not simply the issue of keeping track of where detainees are being taken that is a problem. Accountability has also become more opaque since the formation of the Shia-dominated government of Ibrahim Jaffari with ministers and senior officials at the Ministry of the Interior refusing to meet concerned international organisations including Human Rights Watch.

'We have been trying to break through to someone responsible to express our concerns,' said another international official.

'But it is impossible to meet the people we really need to see. What is so worrying is that allegations concerning the use of drills and irons during torture just keep coming back. And we have seen precisely the same evidence of torture on bodies that have turned up after they have been arrested. There is a dirty counter-insurgency war, led on the anti-insurgency side by groups responsible to different leaders. People are not appearing in court. Instead, what is happening to them is totally arbitrary.'

There is a significance to all this that goes beyond the everyday horror of today's Iraq. In the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime became more important as a subsidiary case for war.

It has been a theme that has been constantly reiterated: it was horrific then, and it is better now. The second may still just be true. In many aspects there may be some improvement, but the trajectory of Iraq now on human rights is in danger of undermining that last plank of justification.

True, there is a question of scale of the abuses. What is also different from Saddam's era is that Iraq is now host to multinational troops, to huge UK and US missions, and is a substantial recipient of foreign aid, including British and EU funds.

British and US police and military officials act as advisers to Iraq's security forces. Foreign troops support Iraqi policing missions. What is extraordinary is that despite the increasingly widespread evidence of torture, governments have remained silent. It is all the more extraordinary on the British side, as embassy officials have been briefed by senior Iraqi officials over the allegations on a number of occasions and individual cases of abuse have been raised with British diplomats.

In Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights, close to the Communications Tower and the location of one of the secret interrogation centres, they were marking the international day for the victims of torture. As officials gathered for chocolate cake and cola under posters that read 'Non to torture', some senior officials are in no doubt that torture in their country is again getting worse.

The deputy minister, Aida Ussayran, is a life-long human rights activist who returned from exile in Britain to take up this post. She concedes that abuses by Iraq's security forces have been getting worse even as her ministry has been trying to re-educate the Iraqi police and army to respect detainee rights.

'As you know, for a long time Iraq was a mass grave for human rights,' she says. 'The challenge is that many people who committed these abuses are still there and there is a culture of abuse in the security forces and police - even the army - that needs to be addressed. I do not have a magic solution, but what I can do is to remind people that this kind of behaviour is what creates terrorists.'

There is a sense of frustration too in the Ministry of Human Rights, for even as the security forces rapidly increase in size, the ministry tasked with checking abuses has only 24 monitors to pursue cases, at a time when officials believe it needs hundreds to keep Iraq's police and army effectively in check.

If Ussayran is robust about her country's problems with human rights abuses, others are convinced that, far from being the acts of rogue units, the abuse is being committed at the behest of the ministry itself - or at least senior officials within it.

'There are people in the ministry who want to use these means,' said one. 'It is in their ideology. It is their strategy. They do not understand anything else. They believe that human rights and the Convention against Torture are stupid.'

[...] For Dylan himself, the Civil War was also a battle between two kinds of time: "In the South, people lived their lives with sun-up, high noon, sunset, spring, summer. In the North people lived by the clock. The factory stroke, whistles and bells." It must have been a Southerner who coined the term "New York minute" to describe the Northern kind of time -- yes the kind of time that forges capital into imperialism, post-colonialism, and oh-so-helpless-hand-wringing-witness to Jim Crow or Abu Ghraib, whichever.

"After a while," says Dylan, "you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course." And the archetype for this sort of story is found in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "Back there, America was put on the cross, died, and was resurrected. There was nothing synthetic about it. The god-awful truth of that would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write."

Resurrection without synthesis. Crucifixion upon the cross of the Fourth of July. This is the underlying song of the great American folksinger. Why he must die in his shoes.

"In American history class," recalls Dylan, "we were taught that commies couldn't destroy America with guns or bombs alone, that they would have to destroy the Constitution -- the document that this country was founded upon. It didn't make any difference though. When the drill sirens went off, you had to lay under your desk facedown, not a muscle quivering and not make any noise."

"Living under a cloud of fear like this robs a child of his spirit," says the author of Masters of War. "It's one thing to be afraid when someone's holding a shotgun on you, but it's another thing to be afraid of something that's just not quite real. There were a lot of folks around who took this threat seriously, though, and it rubbed off on you. It was easy to become a victim of their strange fantasy."

NYRB - Those of us who opposed America's invasion of Iraq from the outset can take no comfort from its catastrophic consequences. On the contrary: we should now be asking ourselves some decidedly uncomfortable questions. The first concerns the propriety of "preventive" military intervention. If the Iraq war is wrong—"the wrong war at the wrong time"—why, then, was the 1999 US-led war on Serbia right? That war, after all, also lacked the imprimatur of UN Security Council approval. It too was an unauthorized and uninvited attack on a sovereign state—undertaken on "preventive" grounds—that caused many civilian casualties and aroused bitter resentment against the Americans who carried it out.

By Sean Paul in USA: Foreign Relations on Sun Jul 3rd, 2005 at 10:01:33 AM PDT

Judt writes:

Among democracies, only in America do soldiers and other uniformed servicemen figure ubiquitously in political photo ops and popular movies. Only in America do civilians eagerly buy expensive military service vehicles for suburban shopping runs. In a country no longer supreme in most other fields of human endeavor, war and warriors have become the last, enduring symbols of American dominance and the American way of life. "In war, it seemed," writes Bacevich, "lay America's true comparative advantage."

And this leads us to a perilous time in our history, one I do not think enough people take seriously. Too many people in America are a-historical. It seems to me they think that we are immune to history's worst impulses. But we are not, as Judt notes:

Historians and pundits who leap aboard the bandwagon of American Empire have forgotten a little too quickly that for an empire to be born, a republic has first to die. In the longer run no country can expect to behave imperially—brutally, contemptuously, illegally—abroad while preserving republican values at home. For it is a mistake to suppose that institutions alone will save a republic from the abuses of power to which empire inevitably leads. It is not institutions that make or break republics, it is men. And in the United States today, the men (and women) of the country's political class have failed. Congress appears helpless to impede the concentration of power in the executive branch; indeed, with few exceptions it has contributed actively and even enthusiastically to the process.

One of the most serious problems is that the opposition in this country is almost too loyal, as Judt notes: "The "loyal opposition" is altogether too loyal. Indeed there seems little to be hoped from the Democratic Party. Terrified to be accused of transgressing the consensus on "order" and "security," its leaders now strive to emulate and even outdo Republicans in their aggressive stances."

This is why I am always beating the table on this, urging the Democrats to stand up and fight the Republicans just as nastily and dirtily as they fight against us. Of course, this is too 'frat boyish' for some people. Fine. But politics is a rough business.

And if you think the media is going to help, well, just read this. Howard Dean, the original angry man. But how about Tom DeLay and the outrageous things he says? What about some of the other thugs in the Republican Party?

But I digress.

Our fascination with all things military in this country will lead only to grief. Of that I am convinced. But what worries me more is how oblivious we are to international opinion, for example, authoritarian China is now viewed more favorably than the United States. How did this come to pass? More importantly, where does it lead:

The American people have a touching faith in the invulnerability of their republic. It would not occur to most of them even to contemplate the possibility that their country might fall into the hands of a meretricious oligarchy; that, as Andrew Bacevich puts it, their political "system is fundamentally corrupt and functions in ways inconsistent with the spirit of genuine democracy." But the twentieth century has taught most other peoples in the world to be less cocksure. And when foreigners look across the oceans at the US today, what they see is far from reassuring.

Judt saves the best for last. And I think Judt should be applauded for saying what needs to be said:

For there is a precedent in modern Western history for a country whose leader exploits national humiliation and fear to restrict public freedoms; for a government that makes permanent war as a tool of state policy and arranges for the torture of its political enemies; for a ruling class that pursues divisive social goals under the guise of national "values"; for a culture that asserts its unique destiny and superiority and that worships military prowess; for a political system in which the dominant party manipulates procedural rules and threatens to change the law in order to get its own way; where journalists are intimidated into confessing their errors and made to do public penance. Europeans in particular have experienced such a regime in the recent past and they have a word for it. That word is not "democracy."

I can already hear some people say, "Judt's rhetoric goes to far." Whatever, because if you think our Republic is guaranteed to last throughout your lifetime, think again. People, there are no guarantees or insurance policies on this. And if they shove a radical winger Justice down our gullets, well, you know. Speaking of justices, here's the really scary part: what if Gonzales gets confirmed? Imagine it.

Yeah, I thought so.

"Turns out, the American dream is playing out more strikingly north of the 49th parallel, says Canadian economist Miles Corak, editor of a recent book exploring generational mobility in Europe and North America."

and:

"'The U.S. dream is probably more relevant here than it is the U.S.,' Corak said.

Among rich countries studied, Corak said, Canada ranked with Denmark, Norway and Finland at the top of the pack in terms of intergenerational mobility. The U.S., the United Kingdom and France are the least mobile."

It must pain the 'wingers to think that their cherished mythology of the infinite possibilities of American upward mobility now only exists in lands controlled by gay commies. The article gives the specifics:

". . . one-fifth of the income advantage is inherited across generations in Canada. In the U.S. and the U.K., almost one-half is inherited.

Corak also cites U.S. research showing that almost one-half of children born to low-income parents become low-income adults, which means they fall in the bottom 25 per cent of income distribution. In the U.K, the tally is 40 per cent.

Children in high-income families, about four in 10, tend to become high-income adults in the U.S. and U.K., he said.

By contrast, there is significantly more movement between generations in Canada.

Corak says studies show that for every 100 people born at the bottom rung, one-third end up at the bottom, and almost one-fifth end up at the top.

For every 100 people born at the top in Canada, only one-third remain at the top."

"In magisterial work for the New York Times, reporter David Cay Johnston has documented the rise of the hyper-rich, the top 0.1 percent of income earners. These 145,000 people are leaving everyone else far behind, even those who would be considered wealthy. From 1980 to 2002, the latest year where data are available, the share of total income earned by the hyper-rich more than doubled. That earned by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers declined.

Johnston's research also makes it clear that the new nobility was the chief beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts. Those helped create a deficit that will, we are told, force cuts to Social Security and college aid, among other programs.

Speaking of college aid, Jackson watchers also probably missed news that the federal government has changed the rules for Pell Grants. That, combined with declining state support for universities, will keep a record number of Americans from getting a college education.

These facts show some of the reasons the Wall Street Journal recently looked at the data and concluded that upward economic mobility has largely stalled in the United States. This historic ability to get ahead through hard work is the 'American dream.'"

"'The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,' said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant."

"Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

'The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,' Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson."

July 11 issue - Its legal appeals exhausted, Time magazine agreed last week to turn over reporter Matthew Cooper's e-mails and computer notes to a special prosecutor investigating the leak of an undercover CIA agent's identity. The case has been the subject of press controversy for two years. Saying "we are not above the law," Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine decided to comply with a grand-jury subpoena to turn over documents related to the leak. But Cooper (and a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller) is still refusing to testify and faces jail this week.

At issue is the story of a CIA-sponsored trip taken by former ambassador (and White House critic) Joseph Wilson to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. "Some government officials have noted to Time in interviews... that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," said Cooper's July 2003 Time online article.

Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.

The controversy began three days before the Time piece appeared, when columnist Robert Novak, writing about Wilson's trip, reported that Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, who was identified by name as a CIA operative. The leak to Novak, apparently intended to discredit Wilson's mission, caused a furor when it turned out that Plame was an undercover agent. It is a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA official. A special prosecutor was appointed and began subpoenaing reporters to find the source of the leak.

Novak appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor, and other journalists who reported on the Plame story have talked to prosecutors with the permission of their sources. Cooper agreed to discuss his contact with Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, after Libby gave him permission to do so. But Cooper drew the line when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked about other sources.

Initially, Fitzgerald's focus was on Novak's sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove's lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak's column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. "He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else," Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing "concern" in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and "those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."

"It depends", said Bill Clinton, "on what the meaning of 'is' is" ; and he was promptly pilloried by scandalized commentators and shocked - shocked - legislators whose morals and motives were of course impeccable. But there is curious silence on the part of these paragons of semantics and virtue now that there is disagreement about the meaning of words used by two pathetic crackpots who occupy posts in the present US administration.

Washington's charlatan-in-chief, Cheney, has boasted he stands by his statement that Iraq's insurgents are in "their last throes", because it all depends on what the meaning of 'throes' is. He decided to order some deep thinking, and his researchers told him to say "If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period".

The vain and arrogant draft-dodging Cheney should know all about that. When the war in Vietnam was in its last throes, and he was obtaining deferment after deferment because he said he had "other priorities", the conflict was indeed violent. And the violence ended when the US was forced out of the country.

It is obvious that when Cheney first used the phrase "last throes" he was convinced the insurgents were in their final shuddering spasms before collapsing. He meant he was sure that the insurgents were indulging in last desperate efforts and that the débâcle would soon end in victory for the Washington warmongers. And if there were a few hundred more US troops killed in the process that wouldn't matter because, in the words of Bush, the "Mission Accomplished" president, "I'm not giving up on the mission. We're doing the right thing."

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on June 23, General John Abizaid, commander Central Command, didn't seem too keen on Cheney's smart comment. He admitted there are just as many insurgents now as there were six months ago, but when asked if they were in their "last throes" he could say only that "There's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency . . . . I'm sure you'll forgive me from criticizing the vice president." I'm not sure what that means except for one thing : if he had agreed with Cheney that the insurgency was in its last throes, he would have said so in a very loud voice. But he lacked the moral courage to answer the question.

Then there is the matter of the word 'quagmire' that so excites Rumsfeld. Webster defines 'quagmire' quite simply : "Marshy ground that gives way under the foot; a difficult situation". Oxford says it's "A hazardous or awkward situation." The sense comes through. Quagmires are nasty.

In his anxiety to portray Iraq as a non-quagmire the equally vain and foolish Rumsfeld told the Committee that the insurgents "in recent months have suffered significant losses and casualties, been denied havens and suffered weakened popular support." Nobody pointed out that in recent months US occupation troops "have suffered significant losses and casualties, been denied havens and suffered weakened popular support." In March to May there were 168 American soldiers killed and 534 wounded in Iraq. But it isn't a quagmire, of course.

Senator Ted Kennedy asked a question about quagmires and "Rumsfeld, flanked by top US commanders, responded : 'First let me say that there isn't a person at this table who agrees with you that we're in a quagmire and that there's no end in sight'." So there must, conversely, actually be an end in sight to the counter-insurgency war.

Let's think back to 1967, to the quagmire in Vietnam. The US embassy in Saigon held a New Year's party to welcome 1968. The invitation read "Come see the light at the end of the tunnel". Exactly a month later, on the night of January 31, 1968, 19 Vietnamese guerrillas arrived at the embassy and blew their way in to its compound, killing four US soldiers. The Tet offensive had begun. And on February 6 Art Buchwald's column read :

"Dateline: Little Big Horn, Dakota. General George Armstrong Custer said today in an exclusive interview with this correspondent that the Battle of Little Big Horn had just turned the corner and he could now see light at the end of the tunnel. "We have the Sioux on the run", General Custer told me. "Of course we'll have some cleaning up to do, but the Redskins are hurting badly and it will only be a matter of time before they give in."

The Senate hearing was on Thursday June 23, and the world was told by Rumsfeld that there is an end in sight to his war in Iraq. But on June 26, on Fox News Sunday, Rumsfeld said "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten, twelve years". So what happened in Cheney-Bush Washington between Thursday and Sunday?

One of the things that happened was a decision that Rumsfeld should get himself on the Sunday news shows to try to make up for his stumbling and embarrassing performance in front of the Committee. But his pathetic attempts to achieve credibility fell flat.

NBC's Tim Russert showed Rumsfeld a video clip of Cheney's silly claim that the US invaders would be "greeted as liberators" and was asked "Do you think this was a misjudgment?" There is only one honest answer to that question, because it was one of the most foolish misjudgments of the many made by the Cheney-Bush administration. But of course Rumsfeld couldn't give an honest answer. He got himself in deeper by avoiding the question and then claiming he had given Bush "a list of about 15 things that could go terribly, terribly wrong before the war started."

Rumsfeld declared that "oil fields could have been set aflame like they were in Kuwait, [and] we could have had mass refugees and dislocations and it didn't happen. The bridges could have been blown up. There could have been a fortress Baghdad where the moat around it with oil in it and people fighting to the death. So a great many of the bad things that could have happened did not happen." Certainly, "a great many of the bad things" didn't happen before the invasion. They happened later, as a direct result of the triumphal mindset and unthinking brutality of the conquerors.

There was no moat of oil around Baghdad. That was a ludicrous prediction. But as to the other main warnings Rumsfeld says he gave, it appears he doesn't read newspapers. It was his air force that destroyed bridges, and there have been scores of oil pipeline fires caused by guerrilla attacks since Iraq was "liberated".

Pipelines are much less risky to target than oil wells, as anyone could have told Rumsfeld if he had not been so vain and smug as to reject advice about his war. Such attacks have several effects : they deny oil, and thus national income ; the threat of interference ties up security forces ; and they demonstrate the impotence of occupation forces and the make-believe government in Baghdad. The day before Rumsfeld's talking parrot performances it was reported that guerrillas had blown up two pipelines : one in the far north, from Kirkuk to Turkey, and the other in the south, along the line from Basra to Baghdad. But Rumsfeld said Sunday that "solid progress is being made . . . economic progress is being made . . ." He must imagine that building more US prisons and military bases all over the country can be called economic progress.

Rumsfeld's alleged warning to Bush about refugees and relocations was not relevant at the time of their invasion. These disasters took place afterwards. Has he heard of Fallujah? It was his merry men who took Nazi-style reprisals on the city and reduced much of it to rubble, creating hatred of America that will last for generations. Rumsfeld doesn't want the world to know the extent of the destruction wrought by his merciless blitzes, but the State Department has revealed officially that "about 90,000 of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have recently returned to the city".

Where are the rest? -- They are despairing, bewildered, poverty-stricken, helpless, tent-dwelling refugees who have to be fed, after a fashion, by the UN and other charitable refugees' organizations. They are examples of Rumsfeld's "solid progress."

And in the north there is massive "relocation" taking place, because the Kurds are forcing out the Arab population at gunpoint, and US forces are doing nothing about it. They couldn't do anything even if they wanted to. They don't understand the problem and they haven't got the expertise or troop numbers to even begin to moderate the ethnic cleansing and slaughter that are taking place. "Solid progress"?

Then there was Rumsfeld's amazing nonsense about the full scale insurgency that has taken thousands of lives. Tim Russert wanted to know if the vain and arrogant secretary of defense had foreseen this, so asked him "Was a robust insurgency on your list that you gave the president?"

That was a very good question. In old-fashioned British military parlance (and to quote Evelyn Waugh), it was a 'swift one'. If Rumsfeld had told the truth and said "No", there would have been melt-down. If he had answered "Yes", he would have looked even more stupid. So he tap-danced round the point and said "I don't remember whether that was on there, but certainly it was discussed the possibility that you could have dead-enders who would fight."

It may be credible to some that the US secretary of defense does not remember if there was a factor as vital as post-invasion insurgency on the list of 15 likely problems he says he gave to his president. On the other hand, you could conclude that Rumsfeld is a liar.

Rumsfeld's tactics are eerily reminiscent of the Nixon era -- "Just say you don't remember". In fact the writer George Higgins summed up the Nixon presidency and was unknowingly prescient about the Cheney-Bush administration when he wrote in the Atlantic of November 1974 that "The Nixon School of Lying was erected on the premise that people will hear what they want to hear, and all you have to do is give them something." Last Sunday Rumsfeld gave the people of the United States of America the same sort of mendacious twaddle that Nixon and his people dished out about Watergate.

Rumsfeld said he didn't remember if he had mentioned the biggest single problem facing any military occupation force : the likelihood of an uprising by people who don't like their country being occupied and who do not take kindly to swaggering bullies blowing down their doors in the middle of the night, stealing their savings, humiliating men, terrifying women, torturing captives and in general behaving as barbarians. The army and marines acted and continue to act like a tribe of video-game hi-tech savages. Their conduct is a direct result of lack of training that was caused by lack of planning.

And the lack of planning was the direct result of inaction on the part of a vain, naïve and foolish man : Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. He thought he knew it all. He thought he was infallible. Perfection personified in a priggish buffoon. But at the Senate hearing he was taken down a well-deserved peg by Senator Byrd who said "Mr. Secretary, I've watched you with a considerable amount of amusement . . . I don't think I've ever heard a secretary of defense who likes to lecture the committee as much as you. You may not like our questions, but we represent the people . . . We ask the questions that the people ask of us whether you like it or not . . . The problem is we didn't ask enough questions at the beginning of this war that we got into, Mr. Bush's war . . . I don't mean to be discourteous [but] I've just heard enough of your smart answers to these people here who are elected . . . So get off your high horse when you come up here." Rumsfeld could not summon up a reply. (This splendid piece of ego-deflation was not a feature in the main newspapers or any TV reportage.)

Rumsfeld might have been shaken by such a well-merited rebuke from someone whose boots he is not fit to polish, and his dumbfounded reaction certainly indicates this possibility. But he is so absurdly convinced of his righteousness that he and his soul-mate Cheney cannot understand that anyone who disagrees with them might actually have a reasonable point to make.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush are so arrogant, ignorant and vain that they imagine they can never fail. But they have failed disastrously and in the course of their reckless self-deception they have disgraced their country. There is small comfort in the fact that hubris leads to nemesis, because countless human beings have been sacrificed to their bumptious pride. They don't yet realize it, but they are in the quagmire of their vanities.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com

The air strike by US forces in eastern Afghanistan last week killed 17 civilians including women and children, a provincial governor has said.

US planes had bombed Chechal village as part of a search for four missing US special forces servicemen.

Assadullah Wafa, governor of Konar province, said the bombing was a "mistake" and called for a US inquiry.

One of the missing US soldiers has been found safe and the search is continuing for the other three.

A US helicopter that was sent to look for the missing men was shot down by suspected Taleban militants, killing 16 US soldiers.

Mr Wafa told the BBC he thought the air strike on the village was not intentional, but said: "We would ask for an answer from the American military."

He said US planes were still flying in the area but there was no further bombing. He could not give more details on the civilian casualties.

A US military spokesman said of the bombing: "We don't have any information on that but we are still assessing the situation."

At the weekend US military sources said some civilians may have been killed in the raid. [...]

The downing of the helicopter was the biggest single US combat-related loss of life in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taleban government in late 2001. [...]

US officials said it had been a "lucky shot" by the suspected Taleban fighters that brought down the helicopter.

Escalating violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan has seen some 500 people killed in recent weeks, mainly suspected militants.

The US has sent additional troops to Konar as part of a new operation - Operation Flier - against militants in the region, ahead of parliamentary elections due in September.

George Bush sounds a warning today to those hoping for a significant deal on Africa and climate change at Wednesday's G8 summit, making clear that when he arrives at Gleneagles he will dedicate his efforts to putting America's interests first.

The president will adopt a stance starkly at odds with the idealism professed by the performers at Saturday's Live 8 concerts around the world and their television audience of 2 billion.

"I go to the G8 not really trying to make [Tony Blair] look bad or good; but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country."

Further difficulties for the G8 negotiations came as Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, expressed opposition to Britain's plans to double aid over the next five years.

Berlin is refusing to increase its aid budget for Africa from €1.8bn (£1.2bn) a year to €2.4bn - as Mr Blair hoped - and has expressed scepticism over a proposed tax on air tickets to be earmarked for aid.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "Let's be judged on the outcome of G8 rather than anything which happens beforehand. We are still making progress."

Jacques Chirac, the French president, sounded a slightly more promising note yesterday by saying G8 leaders were "heading towards" an agreement on climate change after a meeting with Mr Schröder and Vladimir Putin in Svetlogorsk, Russia. He did not, however, say what the deal was.

Bob Geldof, the Live 8 organiser, and stars including Sir Paul McCartney, have urged the 205,000 who attended the concert in Hyde Park, London, to step up the pressure by attending the mass demonstration in Edinburgh on Wednesday. "For God's sake, take this seriously. Don't behave normally. Don't look for compromises. Be great," they said, in a message to G8 leaders. They declared the concerts, which took place in every G8 country, an unqualified success.

Gordon Brown described Live 8 supporters and the 250,000 Make Poverty History campaigners who marched through Edinburgh as "Britain at its best" yesterday, telling the BBC they were proof that people could have power if they made their views felt.

In an interview for ITV1's Tonight With Trevor McDonald, recorded last week and to be screened this evening, Mr Bush accepted that climate change is "a significant, long-term issue that we've got to deal with" and is man-made "to a certain extent". But asked if other countries can expect US support for a binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions, he replied: "If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is no. [Kyoto] would have destroyed our economy."

He sought to focus on clean technologies instead.

Guy Thompson of the Green Alliance described it as a rebuff to meaningful action on climate change, while Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth International said: "As much as we want to see [a deal] happening, it is clear that the US just isn't moving."

Asked if he would make a special effort to help Mr Blair in return for his support over Iraq, Mr Bush replied: "I really don't view our relationship as one of quid pro quo.

"Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did."

Mr Bush also said that the rich world had an "obligation" to make trade fairer, but made it clear he would not slash farming subsidies unless the European Union did the same.

He said America was "leading the world when it comes to helping Africa", despite the fact that it gives only 0.2% of its GDP in overseas aid - well below the UN's 0.7% target.

Oxfam said the development deals agreed to date fell well short of what was required.

"Given the events of this weekend, there are millions of people expecting G8 to come up with something extraordinary, and this isn't it," said Oxfam's Max Lawson.

With British-German relations at an all-time low after the failed EU budget summit, there is little incentive for a wounded Mr Schröder to support the prime minister next week. His officials blame Mr Blair for wrecking the budget deal and accuse him of exploiting the summit to improve his public image at home.

Egypt has appealed to the kidnappers of its ambassador in Iraq to treat him well and view him as an Arab patriot.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Egypt was working with Iraqi officials to secure the release of Ihab al-Sherif who was seized in Baghdad on Saturday.

He said he understood the "fury" of the Iraqi people, but stressed that Mr Sherif "is working for the benefit of the Iraqi and the Egyptian people".

Mr Sherif arrived in Iraq as Egypt's top diplomat only five weeks ago.

He was subsequently designated ambassador, making Egypt the first Arab country to upgrade ties with Iraq.

The move was praised by Iraq's foreign minister last week.

But Egypt's decision may have angered the kidnappers, says the BBC's Heba Saleh in Cairo.

The US has been encouraging Arab countries to appoint ambassadors to Baghdad in an attempt to strengthen the new state and undermine the insurgency.

Many withdrew their ambassadors from Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"He does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the shrubs, not only by contact but by breathing on them, and splits the rocks, such power of evil is there in him."

Pliny describing the Basilisk

Our post-modern world neglects the wisdom of the ancients, wisdom dressed in horrific images of crowned serpents, the Basilisks, or Bucentaur's, monsters half man and half Ox, or Chimera's, monsters with a lion's head, the body of a goat and tail of a dragon, images of human duality, reflecting the bestial, evil nature that pulses in our veins. But these monsters strut our modern stage, "lofty and upright," leaders of the "free" world extolling their own virtues to a cowed world and an obsequious press.

Consider our swaggering Basilisk as he admonished Putin to acknowledge "Russia's domination of Central and Eastern Europe," following WWII, "and its harsh occupation of the Baltic countries" when he spoke before the people of Latvia not a month ago. Consider as well how Putin held the mirror up to our crowned serpent, thus turning his venom on himself, as he acidly commented on "60 Minutes" that Bush should question his own democratic ways before looking for problems with Russia's. Why learn from the beast that occupies Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine today to express sorrow for actions taken by the beast that ran Russia years ago? What hypocrisy. Why listen to evil incarnate that treacherously lied to America and the world, feigns ignorance of the memo that describes his duplicity made public in the UK this very month, and publicly pranc