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also [latest WWIII news] - [WWIII news links]
A counterfeit world order - starting in
the cradle of civilisation, Iraq
'And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet' Matthew 24:6
Between the lines - what the mainstream
press isn't telling us
http://www.rense.com/general45/drk.htm
Most recent additions
Order from chaos - official policy
By Noah Shachtman
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65885,00.html
Dec. 01, 2004
ORLANDO, Florida -- Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns.
As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq. Around the same time, the first prototypes of a new, unmanned ambulance should be ready for the Army to start testing. In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone.
"Putting something like this into the field, we're about
to start something that's never been done before," said Staff Sgt. Santiago
Tordillos, waving to the black, 2-foot-six-inch robot rolling around the
carpeted floor on twin treads, an M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical
grip. For years, the Pentagon and defense contractors have been toying with
the idea of sending armed, unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, into battle.
Actually putting together the robots was a remarkably straightforward job,
said Tordillos, who works in the Army's Armaments Engineering and Technology
Center.
Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.
For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller
swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant
tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away.
The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons
and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals
instead.
"We were ready to send it a month ago," Tordillos said. Navigating the Pentagon bureaucracy and putting together the proper training manuals are what's keeping the Talon stateside, for now.
Back in December 2003, the Army's 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division tested an armed Talon in Kuwait. Now, the brigade wants 18 of the UGVs to watch the backs of its Stryker armored vehicles.
Four cameras and a pair of night-vision binoculars allow the robot to operate at all times of the day. It has a range of about a half-mile in urban areas, more in the open desert. And with the ability to carry four 66-mm rockets or six 40-mm grenades, as well as an M240 or M249 machine gun, the robots can take on additional duties fast, said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.
"It's a premonition of things to come," Pike said. "It makes sense. These things have no family to write home to. They're fearless. Youcan put them places you'd have a hard time putting a soldier in."
It's the same goal Army-funded researchers are keeping in mind as they develop an unmanned ambulance. The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin.
The idea is for
battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back
to a field hospital in the REV. But the REV also carries an electrically
powered, 600-pound, six-wheeled robot with a mechanical arm that can drag
a wounded fighter to safety if there isn't a flesh-and-blood soldier around.
Ordinarily, it takes two to four men to get the wounded out of harm's way.
Patrick Rowe, with Applied Perception of Pittsburgh, said he hopes the REV
will cut that number, maybe by half. The firm is scheduled to show off prototypes
of the robots to the Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research
Center in March.
But this early version will be limited, Howe said. Ideally, the REV would drive around on its own, with no help from human operators. In practice, the robot would either be driven by a person with a joystick, or it would get around by itself by sticking to carefully preplanned routes. As the limited performances in the Pentagon's robot off-road rally in March showed, unmanned drivers are still pretty lousy at handling open, unknown terrain.
That's one of the reasons why iRobot's new UGV will still have a steering wheel inside, so it can be driven by a human, too. The company -- best known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and the PackBot UGVs that the Army has been using to clear bombs and explore suspected terrorist hideouts in the Middle East -- is now working with agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere to build a cargo-hauling robot.
The M-Gator is a six-wheeled, diesel mini-Jeep that soldiers use to schlep about 1,400 pounds of gear. IRobot wants to have a robotic version ready by next year, so it can show it off to the Army and try to get funding for a full line of the vehicles, which would work as mechanical pack mules. The company hopes to be in production by 2006.
By then, the armed Talon will have been in operation for about a year, if all goes according to plan. And for those of you who might be worried about the robot getting loose with a "runaway gun," Tordillos orders you to relax. "The thing is not shooting on its own. You've got to have these," he said, waving a set of small, silvery keys, which fit into a lock on the Talon's briefcase-sized controller. A single switch causes the robot to reboot and return to safe mode.
GlobalSecurity.org's Pike isn't worried about the Talon going haywire. He's concerned about what the armed UGV represents for the future. "
This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. On the one hand, this could make our flesh-and-blood soldiers so hard to get to that traditional war -- a match of relatively evenly matched peers -- could become a thing of the past," he said. "But this might also rob us of our humanity. We could be the ones that wind up looking like Terminators, in the world's eyes."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65885,00.html
November 15, 2004
By FRANCIS A. BOYLE
The obliteration of Fallujah continues apace. Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defines a Nuremberg War Crime in relevant part as the ". . . wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages. . ." According to this definition, the Bush Jr. administration's destruction of Fallujah constitutes a war crime for which Nazis were tried and executed. There is nothing surprising about that.
Since the Bush Jr. administration's installation in power by the United States Supreme Court in January of 2001, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States of America that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, international organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements for maintaining international peace and security. What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international legal order by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. This is not simply a question of giving or withholding the benefit of the doubt when it comes to complicated matters of foreign affairs and defense policies to a U.S. government charged with the security of both its own citizens and those of its allies in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific. Rather, the Bush Jr. administration's foreign policy constitutes ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles. So their obliteration of Fallujah was to be expected.
One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the "good" Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi-terror state even unto death.
Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the "good" Americans? Well, there are some good Americans. Like three Catholic Nuns in Denver, they are getting arrested and going to jail for protesting against United States weapons of mass destruction (WMD) whose power for human extermination far exceeds even the wildest fantasies of Hitler and the Nazis. Or else for protesting against illegal U.S.. military interventions around the world. Just recently the Nuclear Resister estimated that since the Fall of 2002, there have been more than 9,500 anti-war related arrests in the United States alone. Many more will be coming.
In international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, due to its formulation and undertaking of aggressive war policies that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the Nazi regime. As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of non-violent civil resistance in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.
This same right of civil resistance extends pari passu to all citizens of the world community of states. Everyone around the world has both the right and the duty under international law to resist ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its nefarious foreign accomplices such as Blair, Berlusconi, Howard, Koizumi, Kwasniewski, etc. by all non-violent means possible. If it is not so restrained, the Bush Jr. administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.
The time for preventive action is now. Civil resistance is the way to go. People power can overcome power politics. Popular movements have succeeded in toppling tyrannical, dictatorial and authoritarian regimes throughout former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, and most recently in Latin America. It is time once again to exercise People Power here in the United States of America: "When in the Course of human Events. . . We hold these Truths to be self-evident. . . . we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and sacred Honor."
Despite the best efforts by the Bush Jr. Leaguers to the contrary, we American Citizens still have our First Amendment Rights: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to Petition our Government for the Redress of these massive Grievances, Civil Resistance, etc. We are going to have to start vigorously exercising all of our First Amendment Rights right now. We must use them or else, as the saying goes, we will lose them. We must act not only for the good of the Peoples of Southwest Asia, but for our future, that of our children, that of our nation as a democratic society committed to the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution. The Nazis had their "homeland" too.
Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle11152004.html
Audrey Gillan
Thursday November 11, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1348237,00.html
The father of two Black Watch soldiers serving at Camp Dogwood in Iraq threatened to kill the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, yesterday because he was a "two-faced lying git".
James Buchanan, whose sons Gary, 27, and Craig, 24, both corporals, were due to return home but then redeployed north to reinforce the American assault on Falluja, said: "This man has got me so angry. If I see him in the street I would kill him. I would kill that man. I would cut his throat."
The former RAF warrant officer's outburst came at the launch of Families Against the War, a group of families who will campaign for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq. They include parents of sons who were killed in Iraq as well as parents of those currently serving.
The launch, on the eve of Armistice day, coincided with an announcement from the Ministry of Defence that two more soldiers had been injured at or near Camp Dogwood, the Black Watch base.
The first, a helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps, was seriously injured when shot at through the windscreen of his aircraft. His co-pilot took control of the Lynx and flew it back to the camp. The pilot was flown to an American hospital in Baghdad. The second soldier was injured in a mortar attack on the helicopter pad inside the camp.
After yesterday's campaign launch, the families walked the short distance to Downing Street to lay a wreath of poppies in remembrance of those killed in Iraq, as well as photographs of their dead sons and a letter to Tony Blair.
Reg Keys, father of Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, one of six Royal Military Policemen killed in Iraq last year, Rose Gentle, mother of Fusilier Gordon Gentle, killed this year, and Theresa Evans, mother of Lance Bombardier Llewellyn Evans, the first British military fatality during the war last year, held each other as they stood in front of the door to No 10.
Mrs Evans had earlier broken down at the press conference when Mr Keys told how her son had died in a helicopter crash which was witnessed by her other son.
She wept as Mr Keys told how she had held two funerals for her son - one for his body and another for further body parts sent to her from America. She wept again when the families passed the Cenotaph on Whitehall which remembers the country's war dead.
In their letter to the prime minister, the families said: "When enlisting, service men and women sign an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty's government.
"All these people ask in return is that their government act in an honourable, truthful and honest manner and only deploy troops into the theatre of war to risk their lives when absolutely necessary, when all avenues of diplomacy have been exhausted.
"To deploy troops based on deceit of WMD is totally morally unacceptable. The blame lies firmly at your doorstep. This was a contrived war, a war of option not of necessity."
The laying of the wreath at Downing Street was a contentious issue, with the families initially being told that they wouldn't be able to do so.
Officials finally relented and after observing a minute's silence on the No 10 doorstep, Mr Keys and Mrs Gentle knocked on the door and went inside for just under a minute.
Their earlier request to meet Mr Blair was dismissed. The families then went to a private meeting with 40 cross-party MPs before taking part in an anti-war demonstration in Parliament Square.
During his outburst, Mr Buchanan explained that none of the families involved with the group were anti-military and that fighting was his sons' job. He added, however, that his sons had not signed up to fight for the Americans or for lies.
He said that Mr Hoon had lied to the Black Watch families for three weeks over what was happening to the soldiers.
Mr Buchanan's son Craig, a Warrior driver, had been close friends with Private Piti Tukutukuwaqa, a Fijian member of the Black Watch who was killed in a suicide bomb attack on Monday. His best man had been killed earlier in the conflict.
Four Black Watch soldiers have been killed in hostile action since the deployment to Camp Dogwood.
A number of others have been injured, some seriously, with one soldier losing both legs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1348237,00.html
Scott Ritter
Monday November 1, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1340562,00.html
The full scale of the human cost already paid for the war on Iraq is only now becoming clear. Last week's estimate by investigators, using credible methodology, that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them women and children - have died since the US-led invasion is a profound moral indictment of our countries. The US and British governments quickly moved to cast doubt on the Lancet medical journal findings, citing other studies. These mainly media-based reports put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at about 15,000 - although the basis for such an endorsement is unclear, since neither the US nor the UK admits to collecting data on Iraqi civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths have always been a tragic reality of modern war. But the conflict in Iraq was supposed to be different - US and British forces were dispatched to liberate the Iraqi people, not impose their own tyranny of violence.
Reading accounts of the US-led invasion, one is struck by the constant, almost casual, reference to civilian deaths. Soldiers and marines speak of destroying hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles that turned out to be crammed with civilians. US marines acknowledged in the aftermath of the early, bloody battle for Nassiriya that their artillery and air power had pounded civilian areas in a blind effort to suppress insurgents thought to be holed up in the city. The infamous "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad produced hundreds of deaths, as did the 3rd Infantry Division's "Thunder Run", an armoured thrust in Baghdad that slaughtered everyone in its path.
It is true that, with only a few exceptions, civilians who died as a result of ground combat were not deliberately targeted, but were caught up in the machinery of modern warfare. But when the same claim is made about civilians killed in aerial attacks (the Lancet study estimates that most of civilian deaths were the result of air attacks), the comparison quickly falls apart. Helicopter engagements apart, most aerial bombardment is deliberate and pre-planned. US and British military officials like to brag about the accuracy of the "precision" munitions used in these strikes, claiming this makes the kind of modern warfare practised by the coalition in Iraq the most humanitarian in history.
But there is nothing humanitarian about explosives once they detonate near civilians, or about a bomb guided to the wrong target. Dozens of civilians were killed during the vain effort to eliminate Saddam Hussein with "pinpoint" air strikes, and hundreds have perished in the campaign to eliminate alleged terrorist targets in Falluja. A "smart bomb" is only as good as the data used to direct it. And the abysmal quality of the intelligence used has made the smartest of bombs just as dumb and indiscriminate as those, for example, dropped during the second world war.
The fact that most bombing missions in Iraq today are pre-planned, with targets allegedly carefully vetted, further indicts those who wage this war in the name of freedom. If these targets are so precise, then those selecting them cannot escape the fact that they are deliberately targeting innocent civilians at the same time as they seek to destroy their intended foe. Some would dismiss these civilians as "collateral damage". But we must keep in mind that the British and US governments made a deliberate decision to enter into a conflict of their choosing, not one that was thrust upon them. We invaded Iraq to free Iraqis from a dictator who, by some accounts, oversaw the killing of about 300,000 of his subjects - although no one has been able to verify more than a small fraction of the figure. If it is correct, it took Saddam decades to reach such a horrific statistic. The US and UK have, it seems, reached a third of that total in just 18 months.
Meanwhile, the latest scandal over missing nuclear-related high explosives in Iraq (traced and controlled under the UN inspections regime) only underscores the utter deceitfulness of the Bush-Blair argument for the war. Having claimed the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's WMD capability constituted a threat that could not go unchallenged in a post-9/11 world, one would have expected the two leaders to insist on a military course of action that brought under immediate coalition control any aspect of potential WMD capability, especially relating to any possible nuclear threat. That the US military did not have a dedicated force to locate and neutralise these explosives underscores the fact that both Bush and Blair knew that there was no threat from Iraq, nuclear or otherwise.
Of course, the US and Britain have a history of turning a blind eye to Iraqi suffering when it suits their political purposes. During the 1990s, hundreds of thousands are estimated by the UN to have died as a result of sanctions. Throughout that time, the US and the UK maintained the fiction that this was the fault of Saddam Hussein, who refused to give up his WMD. We now know that Saddam had disarmed and those deaths were the responsibility of the US and Britain, which refused to lift sanctions.
There are many culpable individuals and organisations history will hold to account for the war - from deceitful politicians and journalists to acquiescent military professionals and silent citizens of the world's democracies. As the evidence has piled up confirming what I and others had reported - that Iraq was already disarmed by the late 1990s - my personal vote for one of the most culpable individuals would go to Hans Blix, who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the run-up to war. He had the power if not to prevent, at least to forestall a war with Iraq. Blix knew that Iraq was disarmed, but in his mealy-mouthed testimony to the UN security council helped provide fodder for war. His failure to stand up to the lies used by Bush and Blair to sell the Iraq war must brand him a moral and intellectual coward.
But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq. Our collective inability to summon the requisite shame and rage when confronted by an estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, but adds credibility to those who oppose us. The fact that a criminal such as Osama bin Laden can broadcast a videotape on the eve of the US presidential election in which his message is viewed by many around the world as a sober argument in support of his cause is the harshest indictment of the failure of the US and Britain to implement sound policy in the aftermath of 9/11. The death of 3,000 civilians on that horrible day represented a tragedy of huge proportions. Our continued indifference to a war that has slaughtered so many Iraqi civilians, and will continue to kill more, is in many ways an even greater tragedy: not only in terms of scale, but also because these deaths were inflicted by our own hand in the course of an action that has no defence.
· Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America
WSRitter-at-aol.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1340562,00.html
Al Kennedy
Wednesday October 27, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1336683,00.html
Great to be British, isn't it? Time was, we were really uptight, but now we can talk about anything - sex, religion, politics. No matter how personal and complex the subject, we'll discuss it with Richard and Judy, or slap our private Polaroids of it on our websites. Which leaves me puzzled about our silence, even shyness, over this whole torture thing.
After all, torture has mass appeal - as wacky old Stanley Milgram put it: "A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority." Or, to put it another way, if a man with a white coat or shiny buttons tells you to electrocute someone for the good of your country, or his country, or an unnamed man in Sidcup, you have a 65% chance of flicking the switch and feeling just fine about it.
Torture is simple - amazing results can be achieved with the everyday household objects that any Blue Peter presenter might recommend. And it's really sexy - think of all that painstaking attention to genital areas. Better yet, it's about power - having the power to make somebody into something. The kind of exhilarating stuff you're not supposed to try at home. Never mind that even Malleus Maleficarum (the original torture manual for the Spanish Inquisition) cautioned that its victims might say anything to make it stop - torture is definitely about truth and about justice springing in a really surprising and frankly rather ill-defined way from unjust and criminal acts, and don't forget, if we don't do it to them, they'll do it to us.
And torture is just so much fun. You'll never, for example, see a perky torturer trying to kick the habit in televised diary clips. "Yesterday was my first night out ... other people were torturing, but I just sucked my lozenge, and this morning I didn't have that terrible smell in my clothes and hair. And I haven't gained weight the way I thought I would .."
Torture doesn't quit - it just moves. Nazis torture the French resisters; the French adapt Nazi techniques in Algeria and Indochina; the Americans adapt French and CIA techniques in Vietnam; coalition forces adapt CIA techniques in Iraq and on and on we go. Having fun.
When quality torturers lose one playground in, say, Chile, or South Africa, they can transfer their specialist skills to, say, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Today's torturers deserve our respect, whether they're innovative freelancers like "Crazy Mike" and Jonathan Idema, or following more conventional chains of command like "Chip" Frederick - they unite dedication and ingenuity with millennia of vicious tradition. They give living meaning to puzzling technical terms like falaqa, bastinado or squassation and they cherish the gritty sense of humour immortalised in witty nicknames any torture enthusiast can appreciate - "the parrot's perch", "the telephone", "the electric grill".
But we have to remember that torture is also as British as the monkeys on Gibraltar. We love it. We tested it throughout our empire, and now we gladly supply the mercenaries, and restraints and devices, that make it really swing. We built delightful torture/rape/concentration camps in Kenya after the second world war; we excelled ourselves in Northern Ireland; we keep Diego Garcia cleared so the US can use it as a tropical paradise/black hole; and now we're pitching in handily in Iraq.
Even more admirably, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 means that we can - and do - imprison whomever we like indefinitely. No clear charges, no release date, oppressive conditions: it's a splendidly elegant way of making detainees' own fears torment them with minimal further intervention.
Even more thrillingly, we'll now accept evidence obtained by torture in other regimes - just like our clever pals in the US administration who've also ensured their staff appointments, command structures and on-the-ground levels of alcohol abuse guarantee consistent levels of coalition cruelty.
Most lovely of all is the way we Brits conduct our tortures. Our dawn raids and detentions are so quiet, so nicely contained within the Muslim community. The civilians we are bombing and irradiating as you read this are so far away. Our complicity is so gentle. Unless maybe a grown man weeps on grainy video, and begs for his life in a hell he didn't make and reminds us: "I am nothing to you." From Downing Street to Whitehall, from prime minister to home secretary, from foreign to domestic policy, this is what our torture says we all believe - that any human being can be nothing. Great to be British, isn't it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1336683,00.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576429
27 October 2004
Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday.
The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing.
Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the documents were "dynamite", if genuine, and showed that Clare Short was right to assert in her book, serialised in The Independent, that Mr Blair had "knowingly misled" Parliament.
The plans were revealed during the court martial of L/Cpl Ian Blaymire, 23, from Leeds, who is charged with the manslaughter of a comrade while serving in Iraq. Sgt John Nightingale, 32, a reservist from Guiseley, West Yorkshire, died after being shot in the chest on 23 September last year.
The court, at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, heard that contingency plans were drawn up by Lt Col Christopher Warren, staff officer at Land Command, Salisbury, Wiltshire, who was responsible for operational training. Lt Col Warren said US planners had passed on dates for which the invasion was planned.
The hearing was told Army chiefs wanted the training for the Army to start at the beginning of December 2002. However, due to "sensitivities" the training was delayed.
The court heard the training for the TA began two months late and for the regular Army one month late. Lt Col Warren was asked what the sensitivities were. He replied: "Because in December there was a world interest.
If the UK had mobilised while all this was going on that would have shown an intent before the political process had been allowed to run its course." The hearing was adjourned.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576429
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3720316.stm
Wednesday 6th October 2004
Clare Short has likened insurgents in Iraq to the French resistance who battled the German occupation.
The ex-international development secretary told Dubai-based Gulf News that "killing civilians is always wrong.. but I think the cause is just".
As the Americans fought British colonialism, so the Iraqis should be able to "resist occupation", she said.
Ms Short resigned her Cabinet post over the Iraq war in May 2003.
She told the newspaper she understood the anger of those who embraced Islamic militancy.
"My father came from Northern Ireland... and I understand why people think 'I can't get justice in any other way.'
"I think it's always wrong to target civilians... because when you understand the IRA, they never targeted civilians.
"That's the terrible moral deterioration that's taken place."
It was not good enough for the world to say "state violence is OK and non-state violence is not OK", she added.
Ms Short also argued the Palestinians were entitled under international law to "resist occupation" as Iraq's insurgents should be.
Ms Short also hit out at Tony Blair for the way he presented the case for the Iraq war.
He had "engaged in a whole series of half-truths and deceptions" to win backing for the military action, she said.
Mr Blair had already pledged to support George Bush before gaining Parliament's approval for the war, she alleged.
"At the same time he was telling his party, Cabinet, Parliament and the country that he wanted to avoid war, that we would proceed through the UN, that we were determined to get the implementation of the [Middle East] road map, he had already given his word to Bush," she said.
Samantha Roberts, the husband of the first British soldier to die in action in Iraq, Sergeant Steven Roberts, said she understood where Ms Short "was coming from".
"A civilian is an innocent party but military personnel know what their job is," Mrs Roberts said.
Tony Hamilton-Jewell, whose brother was killed by a mob as he manned an Iraqi police station, also suggested the insurgents were entitled to stand up for their beliefs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3720316.stm
Counterpunch - October 4, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/christian10042004.html
By DIANE CHRISTIAN
"The gates of hell are open in Iraq." Arab League Chief Amr Mussa
"When Ramadan starts the Gates of Paradise are opened and the Gates of Hell are closed and the Satans are bound." Muslim belief, words of the Prophet
Arab League Chief Amr Mussa warned before the US invasion that a US war on Iraq "would open the gates of hell." On September 12, 2004, a year and a half after the war's inception, he affirmed that the gates of hell are open in Iraq. It doesn't seem a hyperbolic figure as burning, death, violence, destruction, and mayhem ravage Iraq. War is hell and the US war doesn't escape the label despite its 'Iraqi freedom' christening.
When Sheik Yassin was assassinated by Israeli helicopter gunship, Hamas's Dr. Rantissi reiterated a cry that Sharon had opened the gates of hell, and he continued "they know it's opened, there will be no revenge, it's an open war." Rantissi himself was assassinated a month later and Hamas vowed to behead Sharon in revenge. Dr. Rantissi's claim that open war exceeds revenge signals the idea that opening the gates of hell licenses violence without restraint.
Opening the gates of hell is like what President Bush means by 'war on terror,' a blander phrase. The notion of a war without qualification, without curb, without restraint, 'by any means necessary,' with total power accruing to the leader is what gave us Abu Graib. It is what our leaders-themselves in comfort - send others into. Lawlessness, terror, torture, rape, murder, mutilation, and ruin rule. Our leaders see the gates of hell as the very route to the gates of paradise-liberty, mercy, peace. But the gates are not the same.
At the beginning of Muslim observance of Ramadan it is said that the Gates of Paradise (or mercy) are opened and the Gates of Hell are closed and the Satans (or devils) are bound. The month-long religious observance of fasting-refraining from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual relations from dawn to sundown-is begun in the belief that self- discipline, prayer and compassion are necessary and powerful. As the faithful moderate their appetites, the Gates of Paradise or mercy open and the Gates of Hell close and devils are bound. All, even the warrior of Jihad, must answer the call to the month of discipline.
Syndaresis is a term in moral philosophy that signifies an innate perception of right action-distinguishing good from evil. Do good and avoid evil is the root principle of ethics. The gates of hell and the gates of paradise are religious figures of that distinction. No sophistry, belligerent belief, or god-invoking compunction melds them: hell is not paradise, war is not peace; torture is not liberation; ruin is not building. Only appetites out of control fail to see the difference. The gates of hell are open in Iraq and they are not the gates of paradise.
Diane Christian is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at University at Buffalo and author of the new book Blood Sacrifice. She can be reached at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu
http://www.counterpunch.org/christian10042004.html
By Robert Fisk - 25 September 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=565493
Saturday, 25th September 2004, by
Robert Fisk
We are now in the greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis. That's how we run the Iraq war - or the Second Iraq War as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara would now have us believe. Hostages are paraded in orange tracksuits to remind us of Guantanamo Bay. Kidnappers demand the release of women held prisoner by the Americans. Abu Ghraib is what they are talking about. Abu Ghraib? Anyone remember Abu Ghraib? Remember those dirty little snapshots? But don't worry. This wasn't the America George Bush recognised, and besides we're punishing the bad apples, aren't we? Women? Why, there are only a couple of dames left - and they are "Dr Germ" and "Dr Anthrax".
But Arabs do not forget so easily. It was a Lebanese woman, Samia Melki, who first understood the true semantics of those Abu Ghraib photographs for the Arab world. The naked Iraqi, his body smeared with excrement, back to the camera, arms stretched out before the butch and blond American with a stick, possessed, she wrote in Counterpunch, "all the drama and contrasting colours of a Caravaggio painting".
The best of Baroque art invites the viewer to be part of the artwork. "Forced to walk in a straight line with his legs crossed, his torso slightly twisted and arms spread out for balance, the Iraqi prisoner's toned body, accentuated by the excrement and the bad lighting, stretches out in crucifix form. Exuding a dignity long denied, the Arab is suffering for the world's sins."
And that, I fear, is the least of the suffering that has gone on at Abu Ghraib. For what happened to all those videos which members of Congress were allowed to watch in secret and which we - the public - were not permitted to see? Why have we suddenly forgotten about Abu Ghraib? Seymour Hersh, the journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib story - and one of the only journalists in America who is doing his job - has spoken publicly about what else happened in that terrible jail.
I'm indebted to a reader for the following extract from a recent Hersh lecture: "Some of the worst things that happened that you don't know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib... The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what's happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomised, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking..."
Already, however, we have forgotten this. Just as we must no longer talk about weapons of mass destruction. For as the details slowly emerge of the desperate efforts of Bush and Blair to find these non-existent nasties, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. US mobile site survey teams managed, at one point, to smash into a former Iraqi secret police headquarters in Baghdad, only to find a padlocked inner door. Here, they believed, they would find the horrors that Bush and Blair were praying for. And what did they find behind the second door? A vast emporium of brand new vacuum cleaners. At Baath party headquarters, another team - led by a Major Kenneth Deal - believed they had discovered secret documents which would reveal Saddam's weapons' programme. The papers turned out to be an Arabic translation of A J P Taylor's The Struggle for Mastery in Europe. Perhaps Bush and Blair should read it.
So as we continue to stagger down the crumbling stairway of our own ghastly making, we must listen to bigger and bigger whoppers. Iyad Allawi, the puppet prime minister - still deferentially called "interim prime minister" by many of my reporter chums - insists that elections will be held in January even though he has less control of the Iraqi capital (let alone the rest of the country) than the mayor of Baghdad. The ex-CIA agent, who obediently refused to free the two women prisoners the moment Washington gave him instructions not to do so, dutifully trots over to London and on to Washington to shore up more of the Blair-Bush lies.
Second Iraq War indeed. How much more of this tomfoolery are we, the public, expected to stomach? We are fighting in "the crucible of global terrorism", according to Lord Blair of Kut. What are we to make of this nonsense? Of course, he didn't tell us we were going to have a Second Iraq War when he helped to start the First Iraq War, did he? And he didn't tell the Iraqis that, did he? No, we had come to "liberate" them. So let's just remember the crisis before the crisis before the crisis. Let's go back to last November when our Prime Minister was addressing the Lord Mayor's banquet. The Iraq war, he informed us then - and presumably he was still referring to the First Iraq War - was "the battle of seminal importance for the early 21st century".
Well, he can say that again. But just listen to what else Lord Blair of Kut informed us about the war. "It will define relations between the Muslim world and the West. It will influence profoundly the development of Arab states and the Middle East. It will have far-reaching implications for the future of American and Western diplomacy."
And he can say that again, can't he? For it is difficult to think of anything more profoundly dangerous for us, for the West, for the Middle East, for Christians and Muslims since the Second World War - the real second war, that is - than Blair's war in Iraq. And Iraq, remember, was going to be the model for the whole Middle East. Every Arab state would want to be like Iraq. Iraq would be the catalyst - perhaps even the "crucible" - of the new Middle East. Spare me the hollow laughter.
I have been struck these past few weeks how very many of the letters I've received from readers come from men and women who fought in the Second World War, who argue ferociously that Blair and Bush should never be allowed to compare this quagmire with the real struggle against evil which they waged more than half a century ago.
"I, now 90, remember the men maimed in body and mind who haunted the lanes in rural Wales where I grew up in the years after 1918," Robert Parry wrote to me. "For this reason, Owen's 'Dulce et decorum est' remains for me the ultimate expression of the reality of death in war, made now more horrific by American 'targeted' bombing and the suicide bombers. We need a new Wilfred Owen to open our eyes and consciences, but until one appears this great poem must be given space to speak again." It would be difficult to find a more eloquent rejoinder to the infantile nonsense now being peddled by our Prime Minister.
Not for many years has there been such a gap - in America as well as Britain - between the people and the government they elected. Blair's most recent remarks are speeches made - to quote that Owen poem - "to children ardent for some desperate glory". Ken Bigley's blindfolded face is our latest greatest crisis. But let's not forget what went before.
http://www.robert-fisk.com
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=565493
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1312484,00.html
The Guardian
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1312484,00.html
by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=546763
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0802-01.htm
BAGHDAD - The war is a fraud. I’m not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda which didn’t exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I’m talking about the new lies.
For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America’s puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month’s death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 — the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.
The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein’s “trial”. Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe — until he reached the courtroom — that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked “disorientated” — CNN’s helpful description — because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: “Are you a lawyer? ... Is this a trial?” And swiftly, as he realized that this really was an initial court hearing — not a preliminary to his own hanging — he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence. But don’t think we’re going to learn much more about Saddam’s future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he’ll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime — which were primarily with the United States.
Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching British Prime Minister Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report.
Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn’t Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn’t Bush realize this? The American-appointed "government” controls only parts of Baghdad — and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the “prime minister”, is little more than mayor of Baghdad. “Some journalists,” Blair announces, “almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq.” He doesn’t get it. The disaster exists now.
When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary — be he American, British or South African — believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren’t saying so.
But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the “coalition”, that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the “war on terror” is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an Internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins.
I keep re-reading Tony Blair’s statement. “I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life.” And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn’t find it a difficult decision — because, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing yet another thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I realize what all this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought — correctly — that it might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to British troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not Hollywood but “real flesh and blood”. Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed.
"Deadly force is authorized,” it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad. Authorized by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out of the city US soldiers shriek at motorists and open fire at the least suspicion. “We had some Navy Seals down at our checkpoint the other day,” a 1st Cavalry sergeant says to me. “They asked if we were having any trouble. I said, yes, they’ve been shooting at us from a house over there. One of them asked: ‘That house?’ We said yes. So they have these three SUVs and a lot of weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards the house. And later they come back and say ‘We’ve taken care of that’. And we didn’t get shot at any more.” What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lt. Col. Garry Bishop of the 37th Armored Division’s 1st Battalion believes it was an “ideal” battle (even though he failed to kill or capture Moqtada Sadr whose “Mehdi army” were fighting the US forces). It was “ideal”, Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided damaging the holy shrines of the Imams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and then bragged that they hadn’t damaged Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful? What, indeed, are we to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, US Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage-taking is having an “effect” on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don’t clear the way for them. This is the “safer” Iraq which Blair was boasting of the other day. What world does the British government exist in?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0802-01.htm
24.04.2004 - By PHIL TAYLOR and EUGENE BINGHAM
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3562376&msg=emaillink
They are the agents of Mossad, Israel's foremost intelligence agency.
Since its inception in 1951, the agency has earned a formidable reputation as a key self-defence pillar of a state which has been almost permanently under siege.
When you think of Mossad, you think of daring missions and rescues. But you also think of assassinations of Israel's enemies.
One of its legend-building operations came during one of Israel's darkest hours - the massacre of Israeli athletes by the Palestinian terror group Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Mossad assassination teams were set up on the orders of Israel's premier of the time, Golda Meir, and tasked to find and kill the people Israel believed were involved in organising the massacre. Within two years of the Munich attack eight of 11 people on the original hit list were assassinated.
But why would Mossad have any interest in New Zealand? This week, the Weekend Herald traced a former Mossad agent living in New Zealand who played a part in the counter-terrorist campaign.
He has lived half his life here, is a New Zealand citizen and holds a respected position in society.
He said he has not had any official role with the Israeli Government since moving to New Zealand.
But his contacts include Israeli Government officials.
The Weekend Herald met him twice last week. He spoke on condition he would not be identified.
He said his reason for coming to New Zealand was to change his life.
"I was fed up with all this bloodshed. I'd spent my life in that environment and I wanted something different."
He emigrated with the assistance of the New Zealand Government, which paid resettlement expenses because there was a skills shortage in the career in which he has since worked.
The Government, he believes, would be unaware of his background.
Mossad operations are well planned, he said, but luck is always a factor. "Sometimes luck kills you and sometimes it saves you."
And he noted that despite Mossad's history of daring "they **** up sometimes".
The former agent is convinced that Mossad's interest in New Zealand is likely to be limited to passports.
He has no doubts that if Mossad were interested in New Zealand passports they would prefer the real thing to a fake.
"They can fake them but here it is the real thing. You get a genuine New Zealand passport."
In the past, passports would be sought in the name of people who had died but with computerised records officials can easily check for death certificates. The next logical step was to find someone who was alive but never likely to travel.
Dr Jim Rolfe, a former New Zealand Army officer and defence analyst who lectures at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu, says he thought the era of intelligence agencies obtaining false documents in this way ended with the Cold War, during which Russia had a reputation for snaffling foreign passports.
Clearly, he says, it has not.
The value of a passport to an intelligence agent is the new identity it allows him to assume.
"With a New Zealand passport they can work in international organisations or NGOs in the Middle East as an unsuspected person.
"It's not necessarily that being a New Zealander makes you more trusted, it's just that you're not an Israeli."
Passports could also enable an agent to obtain other useful documents or identities.
"With a New Zealand passport, depending on the true owner's background, that might get you British permanent residency and you might then get an EU passport."
Dr Michael McKinley, an international relations and diplomacy expert at the Australian National University in Canberra, said the value of the New Zealand passport was its "inoffensiveness" - something of which the Wellington-born academic has had personal experience.
About three years ago, he was travelling to Portugal but was told he could not get on the plane with his Australian passport. But when he pulled out his New Zealand passport the problem vanished and he was allowed to board.
McKinley believed it would be prudent to assume that Mossad would have an interest in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Where there is a significant Muslim population which possesses within it a minority of people who are sympathetic to the aims of al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah, or whoever, you will, I think, find Mossad takes an interest."
In Australia, with a large population of Muslims, a few of whom have been known to have fundamentalist sympathies, it would be natural for Mossad to watch closely.
He was not so sure about New Zealand, but said "New Zealand can be thought of as a place where you can hide away - a bit more, I suppose, than Sydney and Melbourne".
This was also known to terrorists, so Mossad could come to New Zealand to check individuals lying low.
Rolfe, too, believed Australia would be more interesting to Mossad than New Zealand. But obtaining a New Zealand passport would make the job of accessing Australia easier.
Rolfe says if a Mossad group was working in Australia, "some of them, no doubt, will be being serviced out of the Israeli Embassy. Some of them will be there as citizens of other countries. Some of them will be there as Australian citizens and some of them [may have been] intending to be there as New Zealand citizens".
The mix of citizenship would make it less easy for outsiders to figure out connections.
"A lot of what this kind of activity is, is throwing dust up in the air. You are trying to conceal all sorts of things, sometimes just for the sake of concealing them to confuse people who try and backtrack."
"Why do it simply when you can add a bit of external complexity so that if someone was trying to put things together they would see two separate operations rather than one?"
McKinley believed there would "almost certainly" be a declared Mossad staff member inside the Canberra embassy. As to who else was helping, it may never be known.
"Mossad, to the extent that public statements have ever been made by people who work for them, seems to rely a great deal on the indigenous Jewish population. That has been an open boast for some years."
The news website Scoop this week quoted sources as confirming that the strength of the organisation was how it relied on help from outsiders.
"Mossad is able to function on a low number of core [agents] due to a loyal Jewish community outside Israel. The loyalists are networked via a system of sayanim, or volunteer Jewish helpers," says Scoop.
"There are reportedly thousands of sayanim around the world. Their role will be specific to their professions: A loyalist in the travel industry could help Mossad obtain documents."
In this way, Mossad's work can be carried out in a low-key way, with the added bonus that its own agents are not put at risk.
As the former agent can attest, there is enough in their line of work that is risky enough.
He admits knowing personally members of the assassination squads set up to hunt the planners of the Munich massacre, and describes them as "the most remarkable people I have met in my life".
The operation was described by George Jonas in his book, Vengeance, an account which the former agent said is accurate. Jonas described the activities of one of the Mossad hit teams whose work led to the killing of eight on the Munich list.
In the process, two of its five members were killed, one after being lured with the prospect of sex by a freelance female assassin.
A second team shot dead an innocent waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in July 1973, having mistaken him for Ali Hassan Salameh, regarded by Israel as the primary architect of the Munich massacre and Mossad's number one target.
Six of the Israeli hit team members were arrested, five were convicted for killing the waiter and sentenced to serve from two to five and a half years in prison.
All were released by the Norwegians within 22 months.
The killing of the waiter in Lillehammer is cited by the former agent as an example that agencies as sophisticated as Mossad do make mistakes.
He told the Weekend Herald he was pessimistic "for the first time in my life about the future for the Middle East.
The Road Map - much vaunted by the Bush Administration - did not discuss key issues such as the future of Jerusalem and defining boundaries and had been overwhelmed by tit-for-tat bombings and assassinations.
He said terrorist attacks had to be responded to with force but he acknowledged a cycle of violence usually resulted.
"They can't sit around a table anymore. They haven't even been able to finalise a framework to get to a starting point."
He cautioned against New Zealanders thinking the country's remoteness meant it wasn't touched by world events. September 11 had made New Zealand passports more valuable. New Zealand was a small, neutral country seen by the Arab world as sympathetic.
By contrast, the Israeli Government regarded the New Zealand Government as "anti-Israel", he said. That view would have been enhanced by Foreign Minister Phil Goff's meeting with Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat last year.
McKinley believes the Australian and New Zealand Governments would be "pissed off" if Mossad had strayed into their patch, although Rolfe did not think the New Zealand intelligence agencies would be morally outraged.
More likely, says Rolfe, they would be thinking of what they could learn from the situation.
"What can we learn in terms of our passport procedures? What can we learn about tradecraft generally? Did the Israelis do anything different from the Russians in the 1950s when New Zealand passports were acquired?"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3562376&msg=emaillink
Dr.
David Kelly - Operation Mason
http://www.eyespymag.com/newindex3.htm
It has been several months since Lord Hutton concluded Britain's most respected microbiologist, Dr David Kelly, committed suicide. The inquest, held in Room 76 at the Royal Courts of Justice, was meant to uncover the circumstances of his death. In doing so, many observers believed that the verdict would dispel any lingering doubts that there was a more sinister reason behind his death.
The scientist had become inexorably entwined with Iraq's WMD, after he spoke about his concerns to a BBC journalist. The British public watched in amazement as Downing Street and the BBC fought a bitter war of words. In the end, senior BBC staff were forced to resign. Tony Blair suffered a bloody nose, but worst of all, Dr Kelly found the pressure too much and killed himself... or did he?
Few journalists investigating the Kelly case have not shared a beer with persons willing to provide the odd clue or suspicion that would point to murder. Crackpots and conspiracy theorists usually force investigators to make a quick retreat, but when those raising concerns are doctors, lawyers, businessmen and even intelligence officers, journalists listen.
It would require a brave person to dispute the findings of Lord Hutton, but a number have.
Dr Kelly was under immense pressure and genuinely feared for his job, after it was disclosed that he spoke with the BBC and reportedly aired concerns about the accuracy of Britain and America's WMD intelligence.
The public fumed after Dr Kelly was subjected to more than hostile questioning by ministers, for here was a man who clearly had tremendous knowledge of Iraq's WMD. When he was found dead, hostility towards Downing Street and the BBC intensified.
Since then, journalists have once again started to sip beer with locals around Dr Kelly's home and other folk who don't really fall into the crackpot category. Information is being gleaned that could yet be of interest.
CIRCUMSTANCES
On 17 July at 3.30pm, Dr Kelly decided to go for a walk leaving his Southmoor, Oxfordshire home. It was something he did regularly. At 12.20am, his wife, Janice, telephoned Thames Valley Police and told officers she was concerned that David had not returned from his walk. Exactly nine hours later, at 9.20am, a dog called Brock found Dr Kelly's body on Harrowdown Hill, about a mile from the Kellys' home.
Brock belonged to Louise Holmes, a member of the Thames Valley Lowland Search Team. She had joined the search for the scientist at 8.00am, together with her colleague, Paul Chapman.
Louise told the Hutton Inquiry that when she found Dr Kelly, his head and shoulders were slumped against a tree. "His legs were in front of him. His right arm had a lot of blood on it and was bent back in a funny position," she said. Paul Chapman "specifically" recalled Dr Kelly was sitting up.
Louise telephoned Abingdon police about her discovery, but moments later, as the couple walked back towards their vehicle, three plain-clothed police officers arrived. They said they were "Thames Valley detectives," one officer showed an identity card.
At the Hutton Inquiry, Abingdon police said that they found Dr Kelly's body lying flat on his back. An Evian water bottle, a blood-coated watch and a Sandvig gardening tool, were also recorded at the scene. Interestingly, Louise and Paul never mentioned these items at the Inquiry. Some observers note that the three detectives has been at the scene some thirty minutes before Abingdon police arrived. The rest is, of course, conjecture...
The Kelly Group is made up of a number of eminent British doctors who believe that serious questions are still be answered about the way in which Dr Kelly died. The group has aired its views on radio and television shows and in a series of features in national newspapers. And while not proposing anything sinister, its members say the facts don't fit the evidence.
On of the first medical staff to arrive in the woods was paramedic Vanessa Hunt. She told the Inquiry: "There was a small patch [of blood] on his right, knee, but no arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of the blood or huge blood loss or any obvious loss on his clothing.
Experts contend that to die from haemorrhage, as suffered by Dr Kelly, you would need to lose some 5 pints of blood. Louise commented that there didn't appear to be a great deal of blood around.
This point has concerned a number of doctors. For example, Dr A Peter Fletcher, a medical expert and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists write: 'Anybody who has seen 5 pints of blood spurted forcefully out of a severed artery will know that there is one hell of a mess. The two searchers, (Louise & Paul) who found the body, did not even notice that Kelly had incised his wrist with a knife.'
The Kelly Group also points out there are inconsistencies about the manner in which Dr Kelly died. Why, for example did he choose such a difficult artery to sever? And why use a blunt knife? One of the UK's most respected vascular surgeons, Martin Birnstingl, said he doubted it was possible for Dr Kelly to die by cutting the ulnar artery on "the little finger side of his inner wrist." He told Britain's Mail on Sunday: "I have never, in my experience, heard of a case where someone has died after cutting their ulnar artery. And I have seen many suicides.
The minute the blood pressure falls, after a few minutes, this artery would stop bleeding. It would spray blood about and make a mess but it would soon cease.
Kelly was in the know. He was a scientist. People normally try to slash the radial artery in their wrist, the one which is used to take a pulse. Or, if they are really intent on death, they cut the artery in their groin."
Experts also believe it would have been almost impossible for Dr Kelly to have made an incision from left to right on his opposite wrist.
THE CO-PROXAMOL TABLETS
The Hutton Inquiry was told that three packets of the painkiller Co-Proxamol was found on Dr Kelly. The sachets held 30 tablets, but only one was recovered. Perhaps it was the consumption of these powerful pills that killed Dr Kelly? Experts are unsure as to what extent the drugs played in his death. It was revealed at the Inquiry, that less than one tablet was found inside his body during the autopsy.
Other unusual incidents also surrounding the death of Dr Kelly. His dental records went missing from his local surgery as news of his suicide broke. Police found an unlocked window in the building. Then, like any good detective mystery, the records turned up again two days later. The incident baffled local police.
Mai Pederson, a close friend of Dr Kelly said he would not have taken his own life. Pederson is a US Army Intelligence officer. It was rumoured that the Ministry of Defence was upset about his contacts with the American.
Dr Kelly died after a situation that he himself helped create, became uncontrollable. Just before he was found dead, he had discussed a book deal with a publisher. This may have been as revealing a work as anything previously written about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. And who can forget Dr Kelly's chilling statement made in February 2003? "If Iraq is attacked, then I might be found dead in the woods..."
There are persons in the intelligence community who believe the cause of death has not been conclusively determined. Dr Nicholas Hunt, the pathologist who examined Dr Kelly said he "Would feel more comfortable if the Inquest was re-opened."
http://www.eyespymag.com/newindex3.htm
|
|
Holmes/Chapman |
DC Coe |
Franklin/Sawyer |
Hunt/Bartlett |
Body position |
H: head & shoulders slumped against tree C: sitting up against a tree (seen from 15-20m) |
lay on back, head towards trunk of large tree |
F: in clearing at base of tree, on back / facing up on his back S: lying on back at base of tree, jeans pulled up slightly exposing ankle, no marks on jacket |
H: on back, dark jacket, jeans, boots B: laid on its back |
Right arm |
H: by side |
not mentioned |
F: right hand to side S: by side |
H: over chest B: across chest, palm down |
Left arm |
H: lot of blood on it, bent back in funny position
C: obvious injury, covered in blood |
not mentioned |
F: sort of inverted with palm facing down S: palm down, "injuries hidden" |
H: outstretched to left; palm up, slightly on side; no obvious/gaping wound B: out to one side, more wrist up than down |
Blood |
H: on left arm/left side C: left arm covered in blood |
blood around left wrist |
F: fair amt on left wrist area & left hand / fair amount sort of puddle around S: large amt on back of left arm, blood patch on right knee |
H: dry blood on left arm from edge of jacket down; amt of blood "minimal", small patch on right knee; no obvious arterial bleeding; no spraying/huge blood loss B: dried blood (cracked) across top of left wrist; bloodstain on right knee, 25mm across |
Head position |
H: against tree |
not mentioned |
F: not mentioned S: head tilted to left |
H: not mentioned B: not mentioned |
Vomit -> |
not asked or volunteered |
not mentioned |
F: not mentioned S: dark stain of vomit from right corner of mouth to right ear |
H: not mentioned B: vomit stains from both corners of mouth towards bottom of ears |
Knife |
not asked or volunteered |
like a pruning knife |
F: open lock knife with curved blade 3-4" long / blood on blade S: curved knife by left wrist |
H: silver-bladed knife pm ground B: left of body, silve,r flat knife with curved blade, like pruning knife |
Watch |
not asked or volunteered |
on top of knife |
F: lying away from body next to knife, left of left arm S: by left wrist |
H: wristwatch on ground B: wristwatch left of left arm |
Cap |
not asked or volunteered |
didn’t know if cap on or off |
F: not mentioned S: not mentioned |
H: not mentioned B: flat cap left of body near head |