Hicks details US brutality:

AUSTRALIAN terror suspect David Hicks says he was forcibly injected with drugs and had his head smashed into asphalt while blindfolded as part of his interrogation at Guantanamo Bay.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11651181%255E663,00.html
http://snipurl.com/bc4f


Guantanamo Briton could go mad from confinement

The solitary confinement of a British detainee at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is slowly driving him mad, his father warned.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1538&ncid=732&e=8&u=/afp/20041213/wl_uk_afp/britainusprisoners
http://snipurl.com/bc4j


“Contract Meals Disaster" for Iraqi Prisoners

Rotten food crawling with bugs, traces of rats and dirt. Rancid meats and spoilt food resulting in diarrhea and food poisoning. This is what detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were regularly given to eat by a private contractor in late 2003 and early 2004...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11744


From Information Clearing House

Interview: Patrick Cockburn:

‘When you have an occupation, you have resistance’: There should be no mystery about the nature of the resistance in Iraq. The situation is very simple, as it would be in most countries of the world — when you have an occupation by a foreign power, you have resistance. And that’s exactly what’s happened in Iraq.

http://207.44.245.159/article7469.htm

At this point, the major destabilizing factor in Iraq is the presence of the United States. We are the lightning rod that brings death and destruction on a daily basis.

http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/121204/opi_20041212004.shtml


From Information Clearing House

by Jim Hightower

AlterNet

12/11/04

[H]ow many of the yellow-magnet people are aware of how our government 'supports' those troops who die in Iraq? While it's been widely reported that the families of civilians killed in the horrible 9/11 terrorist attacks have received an average of about $3 million each in overall compensation -- do you know what the compensation is for the families of soldiers who are killed in Iraq? It's $12,000...

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20724/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Paramedics who attended the scene of Dr David Kelly's death have cast doubt that the weapons expert committed suicide. The scientist was found dead with his wrists slashed after attending an inquiry into claims the Government sexed-up evidence to back the war on Iraq. But two paramedics, Dave Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt, who were called to the scene of Dr Kelly's death in a field near his Oxfordshire home in July last year, dispute the Hutton Inquiry's verdict of suicide. Ms Hunt is quoted in a national newspaper as saying: There wasn't alot of blood. When you cut an artery, accidentally or intentionally the blood pumps everywhere." "I just think its incredibly unlikely he died from the wrist wound we saw."

At the time of his death Dr Kelly was under pressure after being revealed as the source of a report alleging the Government's dossier on Iraq had been "sexed-up".

http://www.itv.com/news/index_1094045.html


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - December 13th, 2004

Elaine Donnelly: "yet more women will die – or be captured and possibly raped."

The Pentagon is implementing new military plans that will make the concept of women in combat a reality. The Center for Military Readiness warned this week that the Pentagon is flouting policies mandated by Congress in an effort to implement politically correct policies that increase the number of uniformed women put into harm's way. Others suggest the Pentagon tinkering with rules forbidding women in combat is a clear effort to increase boots on the ground as the troop-strapped DoD faces manpower shortages in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe. Seven female U.S. soldiers have thus far been killed in Iraq and many more have been wounded. The question is, why? Aren't women supposed to be kept out of units that may see combat?

Female combat pilots and military police (patrolling the streets of Baghdad, for instance) are a recognized part of Congress's loosening of the restriction on the roles females can play in combat operations, even though there remains fixed in the rule book a regulation that exempts women from direct ground combat units that engage in deliberate offensive action against the enemy.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/military/women_in_combat.htm


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - December 13th, 2004

by Dave Lindorff

CounterPunch

12/12/04

This army of 150,000 in Iraq has so far experienced 5000 desertions -- an astonishing rate of 3.3 percent. That's remarkable, considering how hard it must be to desert in that environment. In Vietnam, you could hide out in a Saigon brothel, or, as some soldiers did, melt into the jungle, turn yourself over to the VC, and get smuggled north to North Vietnam and eventually Russia or even Sweden. The options in Iraq aren't so good, particularly with an insurgency that is far less organized and disciplined, and that is as likely to kill a wandering deserter as to give him or her shelter and sanctuary. How much longer will it be before desertion and angry questioning, and the occasional mutiny like we saw in late October with the fuel convoy that refused orders because of a lack of guards and armor on its explosion-prone trucks, give way to the same kind of disorder, sabotage and mayhem that plagued the U.S. military in Vietnam descends on the U.S. war machine in Iraq?

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12112004.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp