Ingmar Lee, clearly, 'cut to the chase' in his article last fall... (See reports that follow):

"The American military, from top to bottom is a hideous blight on our planet. There are no innocents in this massive killing machine. There´s no ´honour' in volunteering for the worlds largest terrorist organization, now under the command of the deceitful, criminal cabal led by George W. Bush. American soldiers are well trained to kill, and obviously, to torture, and they go off to Iraq all of their own ´free will." They know that they will kill, and that they may die. There will not be any "honour," or "glory" for these stupid youngsters who continue to volunteer themselves for ´duty´ in Bush´s appalling adventure. These soldiers, including the 2000 dead, by taint of their volunteer status, are each PERSONALLY responsible for the murder of 100,000 innocent Iraqi´s." - Stop the Troops! There´s No Glory or Honor in Iraq By Ingmar Lee www.counterpunch.org/lee10272005.html

"The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers ... They tied them up and shot them."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060326/ts_nm/iraq_clashes_dc

US forces kill 18 Iraqis in Baghdad, medics say

Sun Mar 26, 1:15 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 18 Iraqis were killed on Sunday after U.S. troops clashed with a Shi'ite militia, medics and police said.

Police said the clashes erupted after the Mehdi Army militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tried to stop U.S. troops from entering a mosque.

A medic said 18 bodies were found around the mosque.

A senior aide to Sadr accused U.S. troops of killing more than 20 unarmed worshippers during evening prayers at a Sadr mosque in east Baghdad.

U.S. spokesmen had no immediate comment.

Police and residents said there were clashes involving Sadr's Mehdi Army militia fighters after U.S. troops raided the mosque in east Baghdad. Police said the troops appeared to be trying to arrest someone.

Sadr aide Hazim al-Araji told Reuters the dead were not militiamen and had been unarmed: "The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers ... They tied them up and shot them."

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited.

ALSO, THIS EARLIER REPORT:

"...they are taking the men for interrogation and leaving women and children alone in their homes afraid and desperate for supplies..."

"...dead bodies in streets and injured people without assistance..."

www.alertnet.org (REUTERS)

IRAQ: Aid agencies unable to enter Samarra

22 Mar 2006 13:00:00 GMT

Source: IRIN

BAGHDAD, 22 March (IRIN) - Aid agencies say thay have been prevented from entering the city of Samarra, in central Iraq, where a major US and Iraqi military operation is underway.

"Our convoys sent on Sunday and Monday have been prevented from entering the city by US troops and our information from inside is that families are without food, power and potable water, particularly because they cannot leave their homes," noted Abdel Hameed, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS).

This, they say, has left hundreds of families without medical assistance and food supplies.

"Innocent people and especially children are suffering from a lack of supplies in and on the outskirts of Samarra," said Muhammad al-Daraji, Director of the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI).

"US and Iraqi military groups have prevented the entrance of local NGOs as well as the media to show the reality of human rights violation inside it," he added.

According to al-Daraji, no citizens have been allowed to leave the city, some 120 km north of the capital, Baghdad, since the operation began on 16 March. US forces along with Iraqi commandos say the operation is necessary to flush out insurgents in the area.

"We have been informed that they are taking the men for interrogation and leaving women and children alone in their homes afraid and desperate for supplies," al-Daraji added.

Nearly 1,200 families have fled the city to Baghdad and are living in abandoned buildings and makeshift camps, according to local NGOs who are monitoring. Few of them have received assistance so far.

Dr Ibraheem Mahmoud, a clinician at the emergency department of the local hospital in Salahuddine governorate, said that they have received telephone calls from inside the city from residents who spoke of dead bodies in streets and injured people without assistance.

"They were desperate and cannot be taken out from there. According to the information we have women and children are also victims," Mahmoud added. "Children are reported to be falling ill with chronic diarrhea and serious stomach problems".

More than 40 people have been treated in the local hospital with injuries caused by the air-strikes and 22 bodies have been taken to the hospital since 17 March.

The Ministry of Interior said that no civilians causalities have been reported so far and more than 80 insurgents have been arrested since the operation began on Friday. "No casualties were reported among Iraqi security forces, civilians or coalition units" the US forces press service said.

IRIN news

© 1998-2001 Reuters Limited.

MEANWHILE...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12467.htm

Children Continue To Be Main Victims Of U.S. Occupation

By Dr. César Chelala

03/24/06 "ICH" - New York - One of the most tragic consequenes of the Iraq war has been its effect on children. The war continues to claim them among its main victims, while the health of the majority of the population also continues to deteriorate. In the 1980s, Iraq had one of the best health care systems in the region. Following the 2003 invasion by the coalition forces, an ongoing cycle of insurgent violence and occupation forces’ counter-attacks have significantly damaged the basic health infrastructure in the country. As a result, Iraq’s health system cannot respond to the most basic health needs of the population.

In 1991, there were in Iraq 1,800 health care centers. A decade and a half later, that number is almost half and almost a third of these require major rehabilitation. This is paralleled by the country’s fall in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index from 96 to 127, one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history.

According to Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission’s special expert on the right to food, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in April 2003. Today, at 7.7 percent, Iraq’s child acute malnutrition rate is roughly equal to that of Burundi, an African nation ravaged by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than the rates in Ugand and Haiti, countries also devastated by unrelenting violence.

The population health problems are dramatically different than those facing young Iraqis a generation ago, when obesity was one of the main nutrition-related public health concerns. High rates of malnutrition started in the 1990s as a result of the U.N.-imposed sanctions to punish the Saddam Hussein regime for invading Kuwait in 1990.

Lack of dependable electricity and shortages of potable water throughout the country have led to the deterioration of the population’s health, resulting in outbreaks of typhoid fever, particularly in southern Iraq. The collapse of the water and sewage systems is probably the cause of outbreaks of hepatitis particularly lethal to pregnant women. According to the Iraq Living Conditions Survey of 22,000 households, a joint effort of the Iraq government and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme,) some 47% of urban households and only 3% of rural households have a sewage connection.

Presently, thousands of children born after the war have none of their required vaccinations, and routine immunization services in major areas of the country are all but disrupted. In addition, the destruction of the refrigeration sytems needed to store vaccines have rendered vaccine supplies virtually useless.

Even antibiotics of minimal cost are in short supply, increasing the population’s risk of dying from common infections. Hospitals are overcrowded and many hospitals go dark at night for lack of lighting fixtures. The Iraqi Minister of Health claims that 100 percent of the hospitals in Iraq need rehabilitation. As a result of all these public health failures, Iraq is the country that has least progressed in reducing child mortality since the 1990s.

There are increasing number of orphans, many of whom have become homeless and have had to resort to prostitution to survive. Although the Iraqi Ministry of Labor has created programs to eliminate this problem, its efforts have not been successful.

War has affected the psychilogical well-being of adults and children alike, many of whom present serious symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is estimated that less than one hundred psychiatrists remain in Iraq (approximately one for every 300,000 Iraqis) and none of them specializes in child psychiatry.

That children continue to suffer the terrible consequences of the war indicates that new ways have to be found to protect them better. An independent international medical commission should investigate children’s health status, and suggest measures for its improvement. Iraqi children should urgently be provided with basic nutrition, immunization and psychological care to alleviate the tremendous damage brought by a war that has taken a brutal toll on their health and quality of life.

Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12480.htm

Some Thoughts about Jesus, The Church, My Country, and The War

By Doug Soderstrom

03/25/06 "ICH" - Likely the most controversial individual in the history of the world is Jesus, known by many to be The Christ. And no doubt everyone, young and old, rich or poor, liberals, conservatives, those who are religious, atheists, agnostics; nearly everyone is likely to have an opinion of Jesus. One poll, celebrating the beginning of the second millennium, pointed out that Jesus Christ, more than anyone else, is responsible for how people in the Western World think. Without a doubt this fellow from the city of Nazareth in an area known as Galilee has provided us with much to think about. Although the man is regarded to be a prophet by each and every one of the great religions of the world, we appear to be on the verge of killing each other for no other reason than our inability to agree on who this man is, what he stood for, and how it is that he would like for us to conduct our lives!

Quite obviously, just as yours, my first concern has always been that of trying to figure out just exactly who Jesus is. And, believe me, if I knew for sure, I would tell you, but like so many who have gone before, I am left with questions. Is Jesus Christ the Son of God…… a God of judgment and wrath or one of mercy and forgiveness? What was Jesus’ mission, to show us how to live a good life and/or to save us from eternal damnation? Did he die only to rise from the grave? Is Jesus the one and only Savior of the world, the one in whom every human being must believe or spend an eternity of agonizing pain in the fiery flames of Hell? Alas, even though I have spent at least five decades trying to figure out who this man is, I am sorry to report that I am yet confused……. but, not to give up, I plan to spend the remaining years of my life interrogating God, all in order to better understand who Jesus is.

On the other hand, there seems to be little question as to what Jesus taught. In order to clear away the vast amount of deadwood, the utter complexity of the Jewish faith, Jesus reduced religion to its most essential elements, that we love God, our neighbor, as well as that of our enemy. Assuming that this was Jesus’ mission on Earth, to show us how to live such a life, allow me to share with you what such means to me within the context of the world in which we live.

Now, within the context of those with whom I have lived my life, I have found the teachings of Jesus to be my best guide. I have discovered that when I chose to violate such teaching by treating others in an unkind manner, nothing but harm has come to me. Believe me, it has been so terribly easy for me to love those of my friends, but so horribly difficult to learn how to forgive those who have harmed me. But in aging, I am convinced that love is a far better thing than hate. As I look back upon my life, often have I deplored that which I have done while angry, but never once have I regretted having made amends, having forgiven, having made an effort to love my enemy.

But what about the church, Christians who claim to know the truth of God, those who claim to know everything about this man they call the Son of God, those who claim to know exactly how Jesus would deal with the critical issues of our day; homosexuality, capital punishment, abortion, cloning, poverty, and war? However, as a psychologist, I am quite sure that such pronouncements are often nothing more than rather well rehearsed attempts to justify, that is, to rationalize, the apparent correctness of their views, unconscious maneuvers, permitting them to believe that God has spoken, revealed his truth, to them. One might wish that church doctrine was, in fact, a spiritual matter, but alas such may be nothing more than canonical attempts to appease the appetite of those who happen to pay the bills of the church. Add to this the rather mean spirited history of the church (the Spanish Inquisition, the rape of the Indian culture during the westward expansion, the brutalization of black slaves, the New England torture of witches, and the church’s longstanding support of America’s military-industrial complex) and you have a misguided church that apparently has very little to offer the world. As James Hillman wrote in his book, A Terrible Love of War: “Western Christianity’s god comes front and center when war is in the air. War brings its god to life.” Consequently, I can no longer, in good conscience, claim to be a Christian. Rather, I have chosen to accept the teachings of Jesus as well as those of other religions that tend to support the categorical imperative of Jesus’ command that we love God, our neighbor, and that of our enemy.

And then there is the mess of our own country. I have often wondered how Jesus might feel about this so-called “land of the free.” However, since we will likely never know, the best I can do is to suggest what appears to have taken hold of the American mind. The verdict: sex, money, an avaricious appetite to acquire more and more things, power, prestige, a jingoistic attachment to that of “the fatherland,” and civil religion, and, in all probability, in that particular order. Added to this there is the undeniable reality of our country’s longstanding desire to dominate the world, and all of such supported by a people who have, with no fight whatsoever, allowed themselves to have been brainwashed into believing that our country has been assigned the divine responsibility of carrying out the righteous will of God. All of such leading to a ridiculously wicked claim that our country can do no wrong!

And finally…… this thing about war. There can be no misunderstanding that Jesus’ mandate to love is uncompromisingly opposed to the mass slaughter that defines the character of war. However, because so many have successfully distorted the teachings of Jesus, our country has been allowed to launch a decades-long campaign of death and destruction formulated to destroy all who refuse to play “the game” according to our rules (vis-à-vis the upcoming invasion of Iran). As William Blum in his book, Killing Hope, so tellingly describes, “It's not that [the leaders of our nation] take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't [seem to care]……As long as death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them .….. they just don't [seem to care].” As a result of such actions millions of people have been killed, the rest having been condemned to a life of poverty, misery and despair. And of course, all of such through the rather loosely coordinated efforts of the government, the corporate community, mass media, the church, and that of our own public schools who have collectively decided that it would be in our best interests if we, the people, remained uniformly uninformed in regards to the ugly realities of our nation’s rather sordid past.

Accordingly, I must admit that I am terribly ashamed to have become associated with so much of what so many Americans have claimed to be so very proud. And I am convinced that if our country is to once again become a beacon of light for the rest of the world to see, a strong and resilient democracy capable of standing up for that which is right and good, then the citizenry of our nation must reverse what has become a slow yet determined decline into a morass of ignorance and sloth, an abject unwillingness to face the fact that our country is under attack (not from without, but rather from within) by that of a rising tide of fascism threatening to consume everything that we, as a nation, once held dear, a neoconservative campaign eerily similar to that which occurred in Germany as Adolph Hitler rose to power.

In the meantime however, I ask but one thing……. that God bestow upon us the wisdom to realize that time may be short, and that if we are to reclaim our nation, we have no choice but to recognize our constitutional right, our responsibility, and most importantly our duty, to throw aside, even to abolish, any body politic that might threaten to destroy a government created of the people, by the people, and thank God , for every one of the people of our country, the United States of America.

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. Psychologist - dougsod@wcjc.edu

EOTS VIDEO SUGGESTION #1

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12463.htm

The Road To Guantánamo

How three young men from the UK, ended up in the world's most notorious prison.

Every American Should Be Required To Watch This Video

This docudrama shows the sadism and stupidity of the US and British soldiers.

The guards behave with the same cruelty you expect to see from SS officers in lurid second world war movies.

It takes a moment or two to realize that these events reflect the reality of those held in Americas notorious gulag.

Windows Media File www.videos.informationclearinghouse.info/Road_To_Guantanamo.wmv

Download Real Video www.videos.informationclearinghouse.info/Road_To_Guantanamo.rm

EOTS VIDEO SUGGESTION #2

HA HA HA AMERICA

A Translated harangue from China to the U.S.A. that laughs at our missteps.

festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=402&category=DOC

EOTS VIDEO SUGGESTION #3

WILD HORSES OF NEWBURY

"When a road tries to destroy ancient forests, two black horses appear to stop the chainsaws ... Even the police were dumbfounded, especially by the 'confrontation' between the 'wild' horse and the police horse."

www.supershorts.org.uk/view.html?id=512

EOTS VIDEO SUGGESTION #4

WOODY HARRELSON - THOUGHTS FROM WITHIN

"'I sometimes feel like an alien creature for which there is no earthly explanation..."

www.voiceyourself.com/03_thoughtsfromwithin/03_movie.php



EOTS

BOSTON GLOBE

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement

In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law.

After The New York Times disclosed in December that Bush had authorized the military to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without obtaining warrants, as required by law, Bush said his wartime powers gave him the right to ignore the warrant law.

And when Congress passed a law forbidding the torture of any detainee in US custody, Bush signed the bill but issued a signing statement declaring that he could bypass the law if he believed using harsh interrogation techniques was necessary to protect national security.

Past presidents occasionally used such signing statements to describe their interpretations of laws, but Bush has expanded the practice. He has also been more assertive in claiming the authority to override provisions he thinks intrude on his power, legal scholars said.

Bush's expansive claims of the power to bypass laws have provoked increased grumbling in Congress. Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ''faithfully execute" them.

Several senators have proposed bills to bring the warrantless surveillance program under the law. One Democrat, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, has gone so far as to propose censuring Bush, saying he has broken the wiretapping law.

Bush's signing statement on the USA Patriot Act nearly went unnoticed.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, inserted a statement into the record of the Senate Judiciary Committee objecting to Bush's interpretation of the Patriot Act, but neither the signing statement nor Leahy's objection received coverage from in the mainstream news media, Leahy's office said.

Yesterday, Leahy said Bush's assertion that he could ignore the new provisions of the Patriot Act -- provisions that were the subject of intense negotiations in Congress -- represented ''nothing short of a radical effort to manipulate the constitutional separation of powers and evade accountability and responsibility for following the law."

''The president's signing statements are not the law, and Congress should not allow them to be the last word," Leahy said in a prepared statement. ''The president's constitutional duty is to faithfully execute the laws as written by the Congress, not cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow. It is our duty to ensure, by means of congressional oversight, that he does so."

The White House dismissed Leahy's concerns, saying Bush's signing statement was simply ''very standard language" that is ''used consistently with provisions like these where legislation is requiring reports from the executive branch or where disclosure of information is going to be required."

''The signing statement makes clear that the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. ''The president has welcomed at least seven Inspector General reports on the Patriot Act since it was first passed, and there has not been one verified abuse of civil liberties using the Patriot Act."

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said the statement may simply be ''bluster" and does not necessarily mean that the administration will conceal information about its use of the Patriot Act.

But, he said, the statement illustrates the administration's ''mind-bogglingly expansive conception" of executive power, and its low regard for legislative power.

''On the one hand, they deny that Congress even has the authority to pass laws on these subjects like torture and eavesdropping, and in addition to that, they say that Congress is not even entitled to get information about anything to do with the war on terrorism," Golove said.

I> © Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://freegovinfo.info/node/437

DOD REMOVES MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM REPORT FROM WEB SITE

The Department of Defense withdrew from its web site a DoD inspector general report that was critical of information security in the Missile Defense Agency's ground-based missile defense system.

Bob Brewin at Federal Computer Week (Article & Links) reported on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 on the removal of the document and posted the missing document on its own web site.

You can also get the document right here at FGI (see the link below)!

The document is:

Title: Information Technology Management Select Controls for the Information Security of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Communications Network (D-2006-053)

Author: Department of Defense Office of Inspector General

Date: February 24, 2006

[Thanks to Secrecy News for the tip!]

MDADODIGReport.pdf 1.29 MB
http://freegovinfo.info/files/MDADODIGReport.pdf

ADDENDUM:

Secrecy News PDF now available in unencrypted format that can be freely copied and printed.: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/skills.pdf



COMPLETE Federal Computer Week article by Bob Brewin:

http://www.fcw.com/article92668-03-20-06-Web

Thursday, March 23, 2006

DOD removes missile defense system report from Web site

BY Bob Brewin

Published on Mar. 20, 2006

The Defense Department has removed from the DOD inspector general’s Web site a critical report that states that the network that links radar systems, missile sites and command centers for the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) ground-based defense system has serious flaws in the security technologies, policies and procedures needed to protect the integrity, availability and confidentiality of information on the network.

Federal Computer Week published a Web article March 16 and a follow-up print article today about the report, which states that MDA and Boeing, the prime contractor for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system and the GMD Communications Network (GCN) have allowed the use of group passwords on the unencrypted portion of the GCN rather than requiring individual passwords.

The report also faults MDA and Boeing for the lack of automated audit trails -- essential to catch inside or outside threats -- on the network.

The report, “Select Controls for the Information Security of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense Communications Network,” vanished from the DOD IG audit report this past weekend.

A DOD spokesman said he was working on getting an explanation from the IG office on why the report was removed from the Web site, but he said he was not optimistic about getting back to FCW today. An MDA spokesman did not return calls from FCW asking for an explanation.

MDA is holding its annual conference today in Washington, D.C., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, named after the president who first advocated a missile defense system nicknamed “Star Wars” to counter perceived missile threats from the now-defunct Soviet Union.

FCW saved a digital version of the DOD IGN report on the security flaws in the GCN system and posted the report on its Web site.

RELATED LINKS

"Missile defense network open to cyberattack" [Federal Computer Week, March 20, 2006]
http://www.fcw.com/article92665-03-20-06-Print

"Security flaws could cripple missile defense network" [FCW.com, March 16, 2006]
http://www.fcw.com/article92640-03-16-06-Web

"Information Technology Management"
http://www.fcw.com/images/st_images/MDADODIGReport.pdf

“System Engineering Planning for the Ballistic Missile Defense System”
http://www.dodig.mil/audit/reports/FY06/06-060.pdf



"People shouldn't be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of their people." From the motion picture, 'V for Vendetta'