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pro-democracy teacher finally up for Gitmo release

An Egyptian-born teacher imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past 3 1/2 years recently convinced the U.S. military that he is not an enemy combatant, but rather what he said he was: a pro-democracy English teacher swept up when the military seized fighters and suspected terrorists from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
In newly declassified records of statements to his attorney, Sami Al-Laithi said that as a result of his detention at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, he is now confined to a wheelchair with two broken vertebrae. He said military personnel and interrogators stomped on his back, dropped him on the floor and repeatedly forced his neck forward soon after his arrival at the prison.
He said he has been denied an operation that could save him from permanent paralysis and is being held at Camp V, a maximum-security wing of isolation cells reserved for the most uncooperative and high-value inmates, while he awaits transfer


This is barbarism," Al-Laithi said of his treatment in the statement. "Why, even if I was guilty, would they do this?"
"I am in constant pain," he continued. "I would prefer to be buried alive than continue to receive the treatment I receive. At least I would suffer less and die."
Al-Laithi said he was teaching English and Arabic at Kabul University when American troops began bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, and was picked up by the U.S. military in Pakistan while trying to flee the assault. Soon after he was transferred to the prison in Cuba.
It is not disputed that Al-Laithi walked into Guantanamo and now must use a wheelchair. What is in question is the reason. Al-Laithi traces his disability to a day soon after his arrival at the prison when he was beaten by U.S. military personnel while at the prison hospital.
"Once they stomped my back," Al-Laithi wrote. "An MP threw me on the floor, and they lifted me up and slammed me back down. A doctor said I have two broken vertebrae and I risk being paralyzed if the spinal cord is injured more."
Laithi said his neck is also permanently damaged because Emergency Response Force teams at the prison repeatedly forced his neck toward his knees. He said the military also forced a large object into his anus on what his lawyer called the "pretext" of doing a medical exam.

"I know most prisoners had Americans put their fingers up their anuses, but with me it was far worse -- they shoved some object up my rectum," he wrote. "It was very painful."

Anti-war and pro-war protesters go to war

Dozens of anti-war demonstrators have squared off with counter-protesters near President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch.
As protesters seeking the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq rallied Saturday, flag-waving Bush supporters, carrying signs in favor of the war, gathered across the street.

Authorities turned out in force to keep the two groups separated.
The protests come as the mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq remains encamped along a road near Mr. Bush's ranch, calling for a meeting with the president.

Cindy Sheehan says she is asking the president to tell her what her son died for since no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

Mr. Bush has said it would be a mistake to bring the troops home now. He reiterated that message Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Coalition Deaths so far

As of Saturday, Aug. 13, 2005, at least 1,847 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,431 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.
The AP count is one higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 10 a.m. EDT Friday.
The British military has reported 93 deaths; Italy, 26; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Slovakia, three; El Salvador, Estonia, Thailand and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia one death each.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,708 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count. That includes at least 1,322 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

US Raids Suspected Chem Facility

I assume this is one that they didnt actually build .

(AP) -- U.S. troops raided a suspected insurgent chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, finding about 1,500 gallons of dangerous substances, the U.S. military said Saturday.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a military spokesman, said 11 chemicals were found in the hideout in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, "which are dangerous by themselves, and mixed together they would become even more dangerous."

"Our feeling at this point is that had this stuff been mixed and used, it could have been very easily used against Iraqi and coalition forces," Boylan said.

The military cautioned in a statement, however, that ongoing testing at the facility was "insufficient to determine what the insurgents had been producing" and that further tests were required.
The U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 to destroy Saddam's purported unconventional weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found.

U.S. arms investigators have said there was evidence that Iraqi resistance groups had tried to manufacture chemical weapons. The information was disclosed in the final report of Charles A. Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, the account of its fruitless 18-month hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

No conection in London bombings

The suicide cell that killed 52 people on 7 July is not linked to those alleged to be behind the second London attacks on 21 July, according to the initial findings of the biggest anti-terrorist investigation held in Britain.

An investigation into the four suicide bombers from the first attacks and the people alleged to be behind the July 21 plot has found no evidence of any al-Qa'ida "mastermind" or senior organiser. The inquiry involved MI5, MI6, the listening centre at GCHQ, and the police

The disclosure that the July 7 team were working in isolation - and were radicalised by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the oldest man - has caused concern among anti-terrorist officers.

Police and MI5 fear it increases the chance that more "self-sufficient" units similar to the July 7 suicide cell are hiding in Britain. Anti-terrorist officers are worried by the evidence that previously unknown "clean skin" terror cells are forming in Britain with little or no help from abroad.

The alleged plotters behind the July 21 bomb incidents in London are thought to have been "copycats", targeting Tube trains and a bus.

Read the rest Here

and i bet some people will still say "al-qaeda" did it

15 Dead after Military shooting in Iraq

Reuters) - An attack on a U.S. military patrol followed by U.S. gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17 wounded in a town west of Baghdad, residents said on Saturday, but the U.S. military said it was not responsible.Residents of Nasaf, a town just outside the city of Ramadi, said a roadside bomb exploded next to a U.S. armoured patrol as it passed near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque shortly after prayers on Friday.They said U.S. troops opened fire immediately after the explosion, shooting towards people emerging from the mosque.Munem Aftan, the director of Ramadi General Hospital, said 15 people were killed, including eight children, and 17 wounded.Pools of blood lay on the steps outside the mosque, and bullet holes marked its walls.

Iraqi civilians frequently complain that U.S. troops open fire wildly after they are attacked. The U.S. military says it does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties and is careful to respond to attacks in a measured fashion.Human rights groups have documented scores of cases in which civilians have been shot and killed after approaching U.S. military roadblocks too quickly, or not following instructions to keep away from U.S. military convoys as they pass

US attempts to block more abuse pictures

The US government is trying to stop fresh images of prisoner abuse in Iraq being made public, claiming they will aid the insurgency, court papers show.



US civil liberties groups have launched a lawsuit to force the release of 87 pictures and four videos showing abuse at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

Earlier images sparked worldwide condemnation and resulted in charges against a number of soldiers.

The US argues the rest should stay hidden to avoid helping the insurgents.

It is "probable that al-Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill," the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Richard Myers, argues in court papers.

The civil liberties groups have submitted counter-arguments by a retired US army colonel, Michael Pheneger, who insists the public good would be served by publication of the images.

"The first step to abandoning practices that are repugnant to our laws and national ideals is to bring them into the sunshine and assign accountability," he wrote.

He also argued that the Iraqi insurgency would continue regardless of whether or not the pictures were published.

A district judge, Alvin Hellerstein, will decide whether the images should be released.

source BBC

Germany slams US over Iran

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has warned the US to back away from the possibility of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

His comments come a day after President Bush reiterated that force remained an option but only as a last resort.

Iran has resumed what it says is a civilian nuclear research programme but which the West fears could be used to develop nuclear arms.

Germany, France and the UK have led efforts to end the crisis peacefully.

Mr Schroeder directly challenged Mr Bush's comment that "all options are on the table" over the Iran crisis.
"Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work," Mr Schroeder told Social Democrats at the rally in Hanover, to rapturous applause from the crowd.

Mr Schroeder said it remained important that Iran did not gain atomic weapons, and a strong negotiating position was important.

"The Europeans and the Americans are united in this goal," he said. "Up to now we were also united in the way to pursue this."

"This is why I can with certainty exclude any participation by the German government under my direction," Mr Schroeder tells the paper.

source BBC