Iraq's proposed constitution - and the process used to draft it - have deepened the divide among Iraq's factions and will likely trigger civil war unless changes are negotiated quickly to accommodate the concerns of Sunni Muslims, warned a new report by the International Crisis Group.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092705E.shtml

In a recent visit to the region, I was told over and over that the United States will never leave Iraq and will surely create permanent military bases there. I hope and pray that they are wrong.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10413.htm

Up to 200 Iraqi Sunni politicians and scholars have pressed for voting down the draft constitution in the October referendum and threatened to declare civil disobedience if the US-led onslaughts on Sunni towns continue.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2005-09/25/article04.shtml


From Information Clearing House

by John Pilger

Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two British SAS special forces men “rescued” from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison? According to the head of Basra’s Governing Council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event, or do we simply accept Defence Secretary John Reid’s customary arrogance? “Iraqi law is very clear,” he said. “British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process.” He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq’s occupiers....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Pilger0927.htm

Since the beginning of the Iraq war, Halliburton, the Texas energy giant once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has seen its stock price more than triple in value.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/stock_troop2.html


From Information Clearing House

When Army Capt. Ian Fishback told his company and battalion commanders that soldiers were abusing Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention, he says, they told him those rules were easily skirted.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10394.htm

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

http://tinyurl.com/84hk5


From Information Clearing House

The disturbing case of Abdul Amir Younes Hussein, the CBS cameraman who has been detained by U.S. forces in Iraq for over five months without a shred of evidence being publicly presented against him, has taken yet another bizarre turn.

As reported by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal last week, Hussein is a 25-year-old freelancer who has found himself trapped in a nightmare of secrecy, suspicion, and legal uncertainty since being wounded by U.S. forces while filming the aftermath of a car bombing in Mosul on April 5th.

At first the military expressed regret for Hussein's minor injuries. But three days later they arrested him, claiming he had been "engaged in anti-coalition activity." Thus began his Kafka-esque legal odyssey, which has seen the reportedly timid reporter shuttled from prison to prison (including Abu Ghraib), while the military has changed its story multiple times, refused to release any evidence against him, refused to let Hussein be visited by friends or relatives, and rebuffed the efforts of CBS to have his case adjudicated in a conclusive manner.

"We're not insisting that Abdul Amir is innocent," CBS President Andrew Heyward told me. "We're just asking for due process and some answers, which so far the military has refused to provide. What are the specific charges against him? What is the evidence against him? Why can't we see it? Instead, we've seen shifting explanations and seemingly arbitrary rulings." [...] Read the whole story at Huffington Post: http://tinyurl.com/8k4g6


© Virginia Metze

Soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division vented their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals, a U.S. rights group alleges in a new report.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-abuse25s1.html


From Information Clearing House