Aristide forced out by US

posted by Mactyler on Monday March 01, @07:24PM

Aristide Tells AP the U.S. Forced Him Out 1 hour, 9 minutes ago

By ELIOTT C. McLAUGHLIN, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA, Ga. - Jean-Bertrand Aristide said in a telephone interview Monday that he was "forced to leave" Haiti by U.S. military forces. http://www.yahoo.com

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War: (British) Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start

posted by admin on Saturday February 28, @04:10PM

· Attorney-General forced to rewrite legal advice
· Specialist unit dedicated to spying on UN revealed

Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff Sunday February 29, 2004 The Observer

Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.

The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal.

Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign.

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911: Bush to Limit Interview with 9/11 Panel to an Hour

posted by admin on Friday February 27, @09:31AM

Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:52 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States will get one hour to ask President Bush what he knew about events leading up to the suicide airline hijackings, the White House said on Friday.

"They are looking at an hour as you pointed out," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said when asked by a reporter whether he could confirm reports that Bush was limiting the meeting to an hour.

Rather than sitting down with all 10 members of the so-called 9/11 commission, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have only agreed to meet privately with its chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton.

more...
http://www.reuters.com

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911: US Senate Panel Approves 9 / 11 Commission Extension

posted by admin on Friday February 27, @04:44AM

February 26, 2004
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:46 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday approved a two-month extension for the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the legislation faced an uphill battle because the leader of the House of Representatives opposes it.

The Senate intelligence panel on a voice vote approved a bill that would give The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9-11 Commission, an additional $1 million and shift its deadline to July 27 to complete its final report about the circumstances surrounding the hijacked plane attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

But the legislation faced opposition from House Speaker Dennis Hastert who does not want an extension beyond the current May 27 deadline because it would delay the recommendations and potentially politicize the findings which would be released in the heart of the presidential campaign, a spokesman for the Illinois Republican said.

"There is absolutely no reason for Speaker Hastert to hold up this extension," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the intelligence panel, said in a statement. "By claiming that the independent, bipartisan commission's report may be used against the president in an election year, Speaker Hastert is prejudging the outcome of the commission's work," Rockefeller said. "It truly begs the question, what does he know and why is he intent on preventing the commission from thoroughly doing its job?"

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War: The unseen cost of the war in Iraq [Channel 4 UK]

posted by admin on Thursday February 26, @02:15AM

US Politics
Published: 10-Feb-2004
By: Jonathan Miller

More than 11,000 medical evacuees have come through Andrews in the past nine months, the Air Force says. Most, we suspect, from Iraq. But that's 8,000 more than the Pentagon says have been wounded there.

Come November, President Bush, who never fought in South East Asia, may well be up against Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam vet. Could that be why the dead and wounded return to Washington in the middle of the night with no fanfare?

But when it comes to the wounded, an astonishing situation has arisen: the Pentagon's figures clash wildly with those of the US Army. The Pentagon lists 2,604 wounded in action and just 408 "non-hostile wounded". But the Army says many thousands more have been medically evacuated from the conflict zone.

If the US government was to admit to the true human cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the wounded as well as the dead, then how many Americans would support George Bush and his war?

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War: Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality

posted by admin on Thursday February 26, @12:36AM

Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian

Dramatic new evidence pointing to serious doubts in the government about the legality of the war in Iraq was passed to government lawyers shortly before they abandoned the prosecution of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun.

The prosecution offered no evidence yesterday against Ms Gun, a former GCHQ employee, despite her admitting that she leaked information about an American spying operation at the UN in the run-up to the war.

She said she acted to try to prevent Britain illegally invading Iraq. But the prosecution at the Old Bailey said there was no "realistic prospect" of convicting her. She was arrested nearly a year ago and charged eight months later under the Official Secrets Act.

The leading prosecutor, Mark Ellison, said it would not be "appropriate" to go into the reasons for dropping the case.

But the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign Office.

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9/11 Panel: Rice won't appear at public hearing

posted by admin on Wednesday February 25, @10:58AM

Rice has declined an invitation to testify at a public hearing of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The commission investigating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said Wednesday that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had declined their request to testify at a public hearing next month.

"We are disappointed by this decision," commission members said in a statement Wednesday. "We believe the nation would be well served by the contribution she can make to public understanding of the intelligence and policy issues being examined by the Commission."

The statement said that Bush and Cheney "prefer not to meet with all members of the Commission."

Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore have agreed to meet privately with all members of the commission, the statement said.

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911: Supreme Court won't hear Sept. 11 secrecy challenges

posted by admin on Monday February 23, @07:47AM

ANNE GEARAN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Supreme court said Monday it will not hear a challenge to government secrecy in the case of a former waiter who may have served some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The court did not comment in turning down an appeal over public and media access to sealed court documents in the case, which has been prosecuted in near total secrecy.

Lawyers for Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel asked the justices to consider whether lower federal courts acted improperly in keeping the government's case against their client so secret that its mere existence was revealed only by accident.

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Soldier for the Truth: Exposing Bush's talking-points war

posted by admin on Saturday February 21, @04:51PM

by Marc Cooper

After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an end when — in the months leading up to the war in Iraq — she felt she was being “propagandized” by her own bosses.

With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon.

Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP’s task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis.

She would soon conclude that the OSP — a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld — was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.”

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Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

posted by admin on Saturday February 21, @03:56PM

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

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