timmmmmmmmmmmmmmay!!!!!

In Connecticut, World’s Oldest Woman Dies at 114

By JENNIFER MEDINA

EAST HARTFORD, Conn., Jan. 29 —

To say Emma Faust Tillman lived a full life would be an epic understatement.

She was one of 23 children born to former slaves in North Carolina, and one of only 15 who lived to adulthood. She was the first black student to graduate from Glastonbury High School, just a few miles south of here, and voted in the first election in which women were allowed to do so. Discrimination prevented her finding a job as a secretary, so she began catering, eventually baking cakes for Katharine Hepburn’s father and Jackie Robinson.

Mrs. Tillman, who died Sunday, was known as the “mother” of the Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church in Hartford, where she sang in the choir for more than 70 years.

And last Wednesday she was declared the oldest person in the world, at 114 years, 63 days and counting.

Whether she ever knew she received the title is unclear. When the television news cameras crowded into the lobby of her nursing home here, Mrs. Tillman acknowledged them but was unable to speak, her head hanging down, a blank look on her face.

By the time they left, she was exhausted and returned to the bedroom she moved to in 2003, after decades of living independently. She went to sleep and never woke up again.

The title of “world’s oldest person” is now apparently passed to Yone Minagawa of Japan, who was born within weeks of Mrs. Tillman and turned 114 this month.

And though it is perhaps impolite to mention, recent history suggests that Ms. Minagawa may not hold the crown for long. In the last month alone, the title of oldest person has changed hands three times, according to the Gerontology Research Group, an authority on the matter.

“The Guinness Book of World Records will not be able to keep up,” said Dr. L. Stephen Coles of the University of California, Los Angeles, the executive director of the group. “This has been a pretty volatile time. Usually we’ve had a more stable No. 1 position.”

On average, Dr. Coles said, the “oldest person” retains the title for about eight months. But since August, there have been five. Dr. Coles said that this was nothing more than a statistical anomaly.

Even among those who age gracefully, few live long enough to become supercentenarians, the term given to those older than 110. With the death of Mrs. Tillman, the gerontology group has records of 84 such people in the world: 6 men and 78 women.

Dr. Coles acknowledged, though, that it is likely that the list, which relies on notification from relatives or neighbors, vastly underestimates the number.

For those who are known to be in that select circle, life as a very old person can become quite a public affair. Mrs. Tillman, for her part, did not shy away from the attention, happy to take in the birthday parties for her at the convalescent home.

On her 113th birthday in 2005, Mrs. Tillman received 113 long-stem red roses from a much younger man — Donald Pitkin, a member of the East Hartford Town Council, who at the time was 84. “My, my, what a lot of beautiful flowers,” those who were present recall her saying. “It makes a woman think she might want to get married again.”

Mrs. Tillman’s husband died in 1939, before the United States entered World War II. She outlived countless other relatives, including one of her two daughters. But of the four siblings who moved north with Mrs. Tillman at the turn of the 20th century, all lived past age 100.

There is no consensus on what allows certain people to live so long, but there is wide agreement that good genes are the best predictor of a long life. It probably helped, too, that Mrs. Tillman neither smoked nor drank.

She also did not drive. But with the exception of relying on others for rides, Mrs. Tillman lived quite independently. After first voting in 1920, she cast a ballot in every election until 2006. She attended church weekly until her 114th birthday, on Nov. 22.

That day, Mrs. Tillman was quite subdued, but she perked up when the choir sang two of her favorite songs, “In the Garden” and “Passing Through,” said John Stewart Jr., one of her great-nephews, who attended the service with her.

It was the last time Mrs. Tillman would leave her home, he said. He recalled her remarking on the milestone: “I’m 114. It’s enough now,” she said. “I’ll go whenever the man upstairs calls me home.”

Mrs. Tillman is survived by her 80-year-old daughter, Majorie. But the large extended family is something of a complicated clan: the funeral program will list 7 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, 16 great-great-grandchildren and 16 great-great-great-grandchildren.

“She was the glue that held us all together,” said Mr. Stewart, the family historian and a former chief of the Hartford Fire Department — the first African-American fire chief in New England. “She has served the good Lord, she has served the church, she has served us. What better legacy can she leave?”

Once it became clear on Friday that Mrs. Tillman was entering her final days, family members filed into her room. They quickly decided they would not attach her to a feeding tube or other machines, preferring to let her die in what doctors said would be a matter of days.

By Sunday evening, Mr. Stewart said, she looked as though she had more color in her face, and a smile seemed to have appeared on her lips.

King's Vision Forged Out Of Ugly Realities

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon. That an Atlanta-born, African American Baptist preacher could rise to the pantheon of national heroes, that rarified realm populated mostly by presidents and generals, witnesses to the best American traditions: We can change; we can make democracy live up to its ideals.

Like heroic statues, however, icons get disconnected from their times. Teddy Roosevelt's imperial warmongering, for example, and his pleas that white women have more babies lest their race be overwhelmed by more fertile black and brown folks, do not appear on Mount Rushmore.

Similarly, in the flood of Martin Luther King Jr. events, you hear much about his dream of equality - motherhood and apple pie, anyone? - but little of his anger, his biting criticism, his occasional confusion or of his anguish over the war in Vietnam.

So here's another Martin Luther King Jr., the prophet who, frustrated in his 1963 anti-segregation campaign in Birmingham, changed from his pastor's blue suit into a pair of jeans and led a demonstration that landed him in jail on Good Friday, of all days. There, responding to a group of white clergy who publicly called the demonstrations "unwise and untimely," King wrote his remarkable "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" a wide-ranging defense.

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor," King wrote. "It must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was `well-timed'" according to "those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation."

The demand was justified when "you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters at brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity ... when your first name becomes `nigger' and your middle name becomes `boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes `John.'" These words will not show up on many King Day programs Monday, but they were the ugly realities that fueled his civil rights work.

And how did he propose to overcome them? By targeted nonviolent action (not passive resistance to authority), which "seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue."

Make no mistake: King was a troublemaker. He called out fellow clergy who were "more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained-glass windows."

Now in the middle of another failing war halfway across the globe, newly escalated by another desperate president, let's listen to King on Vietnam.

"A Time to Break Silence" was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly a year before his assassination. King had hesitated until then to assail the war. He had feared that civil rights would suffer if he confronted President Lyndon B. Johnson. But that January, over breakfast, he saw magazine photos of Vietnamese children injured and killed by American napalm. According to his biographer David Garrow, he pushed his plate away and said, "Nothing will ever taste any good for me until I do everything I can to end that war."

He acknowledged the difficulty of opposing the "government's policy, especially in time of war." And when issues are so complex, "we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on." Are you listening, Congress?

King had been talking nonviolence to "desperate, rejected and angry young men" in Northern ghettoes who asked about Vietnam, where our nation was using "massive doses of violence to ... bring about the changes it wanted."

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettoes without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government." And so he did, challenging "churches and synagogues" to "urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment" and be "prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest available."

His prophetic stand earned him what most prophets receive in their own land: thundering disapproval from friends, colleagues, supporters and the press. It may even have gotten him killed. But he was right.

That's the Martin Luther King Jr. I'm still learning from and celebrating this weekend. Happy holiday.

Warren Goldstein, the author, most recently, of "William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience," is chairman of the history department at the University of Hartford.

Feds Apologize for Woman's Strip Search
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Thursday, December 28, 2006

(12-28) 09:24 PST Tampa, Fla. (AP) --

The Homeland Security Department sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

Jawad filed a complaint, and the agency apologized in a letter dated Dec. 8.

"On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, I offer you my sincere apology for having to undergo a strip search," wrote Timothy J. Keefer, acting chief counsel for the department's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The agency declined to release the name of the suspicious person in the case.

Department spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez said it is standard practice to send a response letter to someone who complains. She said the agency does not track the number of apologies it issues.

Jawad was traveling to Clearwater to visit her 16-year-old son, who lived with her ex-husband, Ahmad Maki Kubba. Kubba, an Iraqi exile and American citizen for 27 years, was praised last year by Gov. Jeb. Bush for organizing a group to vote in Iraq's election.

Kubba said his ex-wife's detention prompted his son to move to Spain.

"I lost my son because of what happened," Kubba said. "My son wanted to be in the U.S. Navy, and he speaks both English and Arabic. He would have been just what they are looking for. What they did to Jawad was unfair and is hurting America."

A Pinellas County jail internal investigation cleared deputies of wrongdoing in the case.

"We followed the same protocol with her as with any inmate," Sgt. Jim Bordner said.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/12/28/national/a092449S78.DTL

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©2006 Associated Press

(10-25) 12:40 PDT CLEVELAND, (AP) --

Armed with guitars, amps and attitude, they rocked the casbah, fought the law and hijacked a train in vain.

The Clash were more than a four-piece band. They were rock 'n' roll revolutionaries.

And now, 30 years after they first stormed across England and later invaded the United States with their sonic blend of rock, reggae, rap and righteousness, the Clash is being celebrated with an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

It's enough to give Mick Jones a case of anxiety.

"I've got mixed trepidation about seeing it, getting to the museum stage of life and still being alive," said Jones, who along with the late Joe Strummer, Topper Headon and Paul Simonon formed the Clash's classic lineup.

On Saturday, "Revolution Rock: The Story of the Clash" opens to the public and will be on display until April 15, 2007. Among the exhibit's pieces are instruments, including Simonon's famous smashed bass from the cover of "London Calling" — regarded as one of rock's finest recordings. The exhibit also includes stage clothing, memorabilia and original manuscripts from songs like "Know Your Rights" and "Clampdown."

Along with the Sex Pistols, the Clash erupted from London's fertile music scene in 1976 to ride the first wave of British punk. But while Johnny Rotten and the bad-boy Pistols vented their nihilistic rage about political injustice with straightforward rock, the Clash's sound was a mesh of influences.

Bob Marley, Mott the Hoople, The Who, Eddie Cochran and others could be heard in the Clash's wide-ranging body of work.

"We just played the stuff we liked," Jones told the Associated Press in an interview this week.

Strummer was the prime source of the band's left-winged platform. He and others in London's punk scene engaged in squatting (inhabiting abandoned buildings) as a way of protest and formed a band called the 101ers, named after the address of the squat where they lived.

"Joe was always political," Jones said. "He came from that background, but the Clash were never really allied to any political party. We were just having a go, really."

But the Clash made it clear that they were making more than music beginning with their first single "White Riot" in 1977 and on tracks like "Career Opportunities,""Tommy Gun" and "London's Burning" as well as in a three-disc album "Sandinista" — titled in tribute to a Nicaraguan political movement.

The Clash often performed in military-style clothing and were staunch supporters of political groups like the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism.

And although they were an instant success in the United Kingdom, it wasn't until 1982's "Combat Rock", with its hits "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go", that the band made a splash in the United States.

"The States are so big that it took a while for people to hear us," Jones explained. "But when we first came over in '78, everywhere we went we saw pockets of the punk scene flowering up."

Jones, who was kicked out of the Clash in 1983 following a dispute over the band's direction, went on to success with Big Audio Dynamite and is still making music. Now 51, one of punks pioneers has few regrets about his time with a band considered among rock's most influential groups.

"I would have liked to have done more stuff," Jones said. "We never stopped learning and even at the end we were doing great things. I would have liked to have done more."

Jones said he misses Strummer "terribly. I think of him a lot." Strummer died in 2002, just a few months before the band was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2003. The Clash were honored three years before the Sex Pistols.

While the Clash's surviving members attended their induction ceremony, the Pistols turned down their honor in a profane letter that was read during the hall's enshrinement gala earlier this year in New York.

"That's not the way we would have handled it," said Jones, who pushed for the Pistols' overdue induction. "We were proud to get in. It's a little like getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame, isn't it?"

___

On the Net:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum:

www.rockhall.com

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/10/25/entertainment/e124045D54.DTL

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School

(09-19) 04:00 PDT Ottawa -- A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted both Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities before sending Arar to Syria.

"I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada," Justice Dennis O'Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.

O'Connor sifted through thousands of pages of documents and sat through testimony from more than 40 witnesses. He delivered two versions of his report to the government: one classified, the other public. But portions of even the public edition of the long-awaited document will be withheld due to security concerns.

The report's findings could reverberate heavily through the leadership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which handled the initial intelligence on Arar that led security officials in both Canada and the United States to assume he was a suspected al Qaeda terrorist.

The report is aimed primarily at Canada's own government and activities, rather than the U.S. government, which refused to cooperate in the inquiry. But its conclusions draw more attention to the Bush administration's handling of terror suspects, at a time that the White House and Congress are contesting legislation that would set standards for the treatment and interrogation of prisoners.

"The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar's case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion," O'Connor wrote in a three-volume report. "They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar's case in a less than forthcoming manner."

A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, Charles Miller, and a White House spokesman traveling with President Bush in New York said officials had not seen the report and could not comment.

The Syrian-born Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable. He was freed in October 2003, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no connection to terrorism and returned him to Canada.

Arar's case attracted considerable attention in Canada, where critics viewed it as an example of the excesses of the campaign against terror that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The practice of rendition, in which suspected terrorists are detained and transported to another country for interrogation, has caused an outcry from human rights organizations. They have called it "outsourcing torture," because suspects often have been taken to countries where brutal treatment of prisoners is routine.

The commission supports that view, describing a Mounted Police force that was ill-prepared to assume the intelligence duties assigned to it after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Arar, speaking at a news conference with tears in his eyes, praised the findings.

"Today, Justice O'Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation," said Arar, who has been unemployed since his return to Canada in 2003. "I call on the government of Canada to accept the findings of this report and hold these people responsible."

His lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, said the report affirmed that Arar was deported and tortured because of "a breathtakingly incompetent investigation."

American officials have not discussed the case publicly. But in an interview last year, a former official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to send Arar to Syria was based chiefly on the desire to get more information about him and the threat he might pose. The official said Canada did not intend to hold him if he returned home.

Arar said he plans to appeal a recent decision by a federal judge in New York dismissing the suit he brought against the U.S. government. The report recommends that the Canadian government, which is also being sued by Arar, offer him compensation and possibly a job.

Arar recently moved to Kamloops, British Columbia, where his wife found a teaching position.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/19/MNGT5L87GV1.DTL

U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000
- By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006

(09-17) 21:21 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Building for the Long Term

Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.

The same day, President Bush said the CIA's secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.

Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.

Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.

Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons — unknown in number and location — remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.

"If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there."

The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends — as it determines.

"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will be tested" in court, he said.

The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.

In Iraq, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a $60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad's airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just "security detainees" held "for imperative reasons of security," spokesman Curry said, using language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. presence here.

Questions of Law, Sovereignty

President Bush laid out the U.S. position in a speech Sept. 6.

"These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation," he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."

But others say there's no need to hold these thousands outside of the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva Conventions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security."

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq's national rights.

"As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary."

At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.

There's no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.

But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.

Life in Custody

The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.

Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.

Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.

The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don't know where their men are — the prisoners are usually men — or even whether they're in American hands.

Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We keep you for security reasons."

Another released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his guards would wield their absolute authority.

"Tell us about the ones who attack Americans in your neighborhood," he quoted an interrogator as saying, "or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years."

As with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.

As bleak and hidden as the Iraq lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The U.S. military is believed holding about 500 detainees — most Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians.

The United States plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next year, five years after invading Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida's base and bring down the Taliban government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the U.S. detention network.

"There's been a silence about Bagram, and much less political discussion about it," said Richard Bennett, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan.

Freed detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that Cuba base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for three to four years, rights workers say.

Guantanamo received its first prisoners from Afghanistan — chained, wearing blacked-out goggles — in January 2002. A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.

Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.

Plans for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme Court ruling in June against the Bush administration's plan for military tribunals.

The court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S. Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating prisoners' rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new, acceptable trial plan.

Since the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims that terrorist suspects were so-called "unlawful combatants" unprotected by international law, the Bush administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva Conventions' legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial features as denying defendants access to some evidence against them.

In his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of the CIA's secret prisons, believed established at military bases or safehouses in such places as Egypt, Indonesia and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists, had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the Council of Europe.

The clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.

Louise Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for "abusive conduct." The CIA's techniques for extracting information from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's willingness to resort to "extraordinary rendition," transferring suspects to other nations where they might be tortured, appears unchanged.

Prosecutions and Memories

The exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly lower-ranking U.S. soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to action against more than 250 service personnel, including 89 convicted at courts-martial, U.S. diplomats told the United Nations in May.

Critics protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.

In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.

Looking back, the United States overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of international law.

It was understandable, the Princeton University dean said, but now "we have to restore a balance between security and rights that is consistent with who we are and consistent with our security needs."

Otherwise, she said, "history will look back and say that we took a dangerous and deeply wrong turn."

Back here in Baghdad, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the meeting rooms of Washington and Geneva, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner release is announced.

As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.

"The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend," said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything about them."

The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.

As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.

"Americans," he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — The Associated Press staff in Baghdad and AP writers Andrew Selsky in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Pennington in Kabul, Afghanistan; Anne Plummer Flaherty in Washington, and Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.

My Chemical Romance hit out angrily when they were pelted with bottles by spirited fans at England's Reading music festival Sunday.

The band members were horrified when the crowd shelled them with trash -- including bottles of urine.

Frontman Gerard Way told the crowd: "We might be outsiders today, but we represent every outsider out there.

"This song is called thanks for all the bottles, thanks for all the [bleep], thanks for all the golf balls, thanks for all the apples and thanks for all the sticky [bleep]."

By Paul Craig Roberts

Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon?

Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.

Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel's attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads. Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hezbollah targets and hits civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US satellites and US military GPS. Don't be surprised at US complicity. Why would the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?

Of course, you don't know these things, because the US print and TV media do not report them.

Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush has told the UN "NO." Bush has told the European Union "NO." Bush has told the pro-American Lebanese prime minister "NO." Twice. Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel's rampage and wishes he could do the same thing in Iraq.

Does it make you a Proud American that "your" president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?

On July 20, "your" House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel's massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, "your" House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also "condemns enemies of the Jewish state."

Who are the "enemies of the Jewish state"?

They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist "settlers" under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli "settlers."

The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called "terrorists." When Bush forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the organization that has stood up to Israel. This means, of course, that Hamas is evil, anti-Semitic, un-American and terrorist. The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government. Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.

Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel's way are terrorists.

Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a militia of Shi'ite Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in refugee camps. The result of Israel's atrocities was Hezbollah, which fought the Israeli Army, defeated it, and drove it out of Lebanon. Today Hezbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social services such as orphanages and medical care.

To cut to the chase, the enemies of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates have sided with Israel against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be overthrown. It is only a matter of time.

Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn't know this. The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be "cakewalks" like Iraq, where ten proud divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.

If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing good for Israel or for America.

On July 20 when "your" House of Representatives, following "your" US Senate, passed the resolution in support of Israel's war crimes, the most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), quickly got out a press release proclaiming "The American people overwhelming support Israel's war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this time of crisis."

The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a pro-American government. The truth is that the American people do not support Israel's war crimes, as the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into C-Span.

Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US "reporting," a majority of Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hezbollah, why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?

Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden's propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.

Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world's largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this "aid" comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect "our" representatives in Congress.

This perception is no favor to Israel, whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the wall and have been leaving. Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned into enemies of Israel by Israel's actions and inhumane policies.

The hope in the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee.

This has been the hope of the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.

The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel's puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.

With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shi'ite majority.

What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to Israel's desires.

Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon thinking WW III was the Cold War) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East, deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.

Rumsfeld's neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.

Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world," thus equating war criminals with civilized men.

Neocon Larry Kudlow says that "Israel is doing the Lord's work" by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel's Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, "go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands"?

The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.

(07-30) 09:49 PDT QANA, Lebanon (AP) --

At least 56 people, more than half children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the campaign against Hezbollah. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to return early to Washington with her diplomatic mission derailed after Lebanese leaders told her not to come.

Lebanon's prime minister said his country would not talk to the Americans over anything but an unconditional cease-fire. Rice, in Jerusalem for talks with Israeli officials, said she was "deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life" but stopped short of calling for an immediate end to the hostilities.

However, she made one of her strongest statements yet saying: "We want a cease-fire as soon as possible." Before news of the strike emerged, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Rice that Israel would likely fight on for another 10 to 14 days.

The United States has resisted world pressure to call for a halt to the fighting, saying it wants first to ensure a deal is in place that will eliminate Hezbollah guerrillas from Israel's border and bring an international force to southern Lebanon.

The missiles struck just after 1 a.m., leveling a three-story building in Qana where two extended families, the Shalhoubs and Hashims, had taken refuge in the basement from heavy Israeli bombardment in the area. Throughout the day, rescue workers dug through the rubble, lifting out bodies dressed in colorful clothes of women and children. At one point they found a single room with 18 bodies, police said.

"Why are they killing us? What have we done?" screamed Khalil Shalhoub, who was helping pull out the dead until he saw his brother's body taken out on a stretcher. The dead included at least 34 children and 12 adult women, security officials said.

Israel said guerrillas had fired rockets from near the building into northern Israel.

In Beirut, some 5,000 protesters gathered in downtown Beirut, at one point attacking a U.N. building and burning American flags, shouting, "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv" and chanting for Hezbollah's ally Syria to hit Israel.

At an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was "deeply disturbed" that his previous calls for cease-fire had gone unheeded. He pointed to the Beirut protests, saying, "People have noticed (the United Nations') failure to act firmly and quickly during this crisis."

Olmert said Israel "is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire" before it achieves its goals of decimating Hezbollah. He told Rice that Israel would need 10 to 14 more days to finish its offensive, according to a senior Israeli government official.

"We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning," Olmert told his Cabinet after the strike, according to a participant. "We will continue the activity and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation."

The Lebanese government this week had put forward ideas on disarming Hezbollah and deploying an international force in the south. But after the strike, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said any negotiations on a broader deal were off.

"We will not negotiate until the Israeli war stops shedding the blood of innocent people," he told a news conference, though he added that his government still supported the ideas it offered.

Saniora and Rice spoke by telephone after the strike, and Saniora said he told her not to make a planned trip Sunday to Beirut. Rice told reporters in Jerusalem she had called to notify him she wouldn't fly to Beirut, "because I felt very strongly that my work toward a cease-fire is really here, today."

A U.S. official later said she had decided to return home Monday morning to work on a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Israel said Hezbollah guerrillas had fired 40 rockets into northern Israel from Qana, wounding five Israelis, before the airstrike — including some rockets launched from near the leveled building.

"We deeply regret the loss of any civilian life and especially when you talk about children who are innocent," Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir told AP. But he accused Hezbollah of "using their own civilian population as human shields" and said the military had warned people to leave the area.

The attack drew immediate condemnation from the Arab world, with Jordan's King Abdullah II voicing his strongest criticism of his Israeli peace partner yet, calling it an "ugly crime." Israel promised an investigation.

In April 1996 more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed in Qana in the hills east of the port city of Tyre, in an Israeli artillery shelling of a U.N. base. The civilians had sought refuge with the U.N. to escape Israeli bombardment and the attack sparked an international outcry that helped end an Israeli offensive.

Meanwhile, Israel launched its second ground incursion into southern Lebanon. Before dawn Sunday, Israeli forces backed by heavy artillery fire crossed the border and clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas in the Taibeh Project area, about two miles inside Lebanon.

Hezbollah said eight Israeli soldiers were killed, while the Israeli army said only that one of its soldiers had been moderately wounded.

Heavy artillery rained down on the nearby villages of Yuhmor and Arnoun as Israeli jets were seen in the skies overhead.

The incursion came after Israeli forces pulled back Saturday from Bint Jbail, the furthest point of their first major ground incursion across the border, launched a week ago. The incursion sparked heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas, who put up a tougher resistance than expected and appeared to still be in the area after the pullback. Bint Jbail is further west along the border from Taibeh.

The United Nations World Food Program canceled an aid convoy's trip to the embattled south, after the Israeli military denied safe passage, the group said in a statement. The six-truck convoy had been scheduled to bring relief supplies to Marjayoun.

Israel launched its assault on Lebanon after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12 and killed eight others in fighting the same day.

Some 458 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in the campaign through Saturday — before the attacks on Qana. Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 18 civilians, Israeli authorities said, correcting earlier reports of 19 civilian dead.

More than 750,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the fighting. But many thousands more are still believed holed up in the south, taking refuge in schools, hospitals or basements of apartment buildings amid the fighting — many of them too afraid to flee on roads heavily hit by Israeli strikes.

In Qana, Khalil Shalhoub and several other residents said people were simply too terrified to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked repeatedly by rockets and bombs. Charred wreckage and smashed buildings line the roughly seven-mile road from Qana to Tyre, where a small amount of humanitarian supplies had arrived. European ships had picked up foreign citizens from Tyre's port, but there were no evacuations of Lebanese.

On Thursday, the Israeli military's Al-Mashriq radio that broadcasts into southern Lebanon warned residents that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles are fired from them. Leaflets with similar messages were dropped in some areas Saturday.

A senior official in the Israeli air force said the village had been warned "several times" that it would be attacked because "hundreds of rockets have been fired from inside the village in the past two weeks, from the backyards, from the squares ... from as close as 50 to 60 (yards) from this building."

Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr disputed allegations that Hezbollah was firing missiles from Qana.

"What do you expect Israel to say? Will it say that it killed 40 children and women?" he told Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/07/30/international/i061500D99.DTL

July 10, 2006

Blast Kills 10 as Violence Flares in Baghdad

By KIRK SEMPLE and JOHN O’NEIL

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 10 — More than 40 people died today, as the brazen daytime violence that wracked Baghdad on Sunday continued despite a plea from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for Iraqis to “unite as brothers,” news services reported.

An apparently coordinated pair of bombs killed at least 10 people in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, a Shiite stronghold, while seven people were killed in an attack on a commuter bus in Amriya, a Sunni neighborhood, according to Reuters. Others died in shootouts in the Dora section of the city and in bomb blasts and drive-by shootings reported in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Baquba, Yusufiya and Hilla.

On Sunday, a mob of gunmen rampaged through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.

While Baghdad has been ravaged by Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in recent months, even by recent standards the violence here on Sunday was frightening, delivered with impunity by gun-wielding vigilantes on the street. In the culture of revenge that has seized Iraq, residents all over the city braced for an escalation in the cycle of retributive mayhem between the Shiites and Sunnis that has threatened to expand into civil war.

Speaking to the Kurdish regional parliament in the country’s north today, Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, said “our destiny is to work together in brotherhood to defeat terrorism and insurgency.” The country’s president, Jalal Talabini, called for calm and warned that the nation was “in front of a precipice.”

But a member of the largest Sunni coalition in Parliament, Ayad al-Samaraie, responded to the rampage by calling today for the United Nations Security Council to send peacekeepers to Baghdad, since what he called the “occupation forces” were unable to restore order, The Associated Press reported.

The violence coincided with an announcement by American military officials on Sunday that they had formally accused four more American soldiers of rape and murder, and a fifth soldier of “dereliction of duty” for failing to report the crimes, in connection with the deaths of a teenage Iraqi girl and three members of her family.

And the final phase in the trial of Saddam Hussein began, with defense lawyers delivering closing arguments. The lawyers for Saddam Hussein and his brother-in-law, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, boycotted the session to protest what they said was a lack of adequate security, citing the recent killing of another member of Mr. Hussein’s legal team.

A military cordon was established to suppress the violence on Sunday, making movement around the city difficult and the full extent of the killings hard to ascertain. Reports of the death toll from the shootings alone ranged from fewer than a dozen, according to the American military, to more than 40, according to some news services. The bombing near the mosque later claimed at least 19 lives and left 59 wounded, officials said.

The military’s announcement about the indicted soldiers brought to six the number implicated in the rape-murder case, one more than previously disclosed. The case has enraged Mr. Maliki and prompted apologies by the highest American military and civilian officials in Iraq. A photograph of the girl’s passport, distributed by news agencies on Sunday, showed that she was 14.

In office only seven weeks, Mr. Maliki’s government is facing increasingly difficult obstacles. Worsening violence has undermined his intention to disarm the country’s sectarian militias. At the same time, the growing furor over criminal accusations against American troops has tested Mr. Maliki’s divided loyalties to his American allies and to an Iraqi public that has grown weary of the American presence.

The killings on Sunday in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad began in late morning, near the site of a car bomb explosion in front of a Shiite mosque on Saturday, residents and officials said. Initial reports said the bombing had killed three people, but the American military said Sunday that at least 12 people, including 3 children, had died in the blast, and at least 18 had been wounded.

According to some residents and Sunni Arab officials interviewed by telephone, the gunmen, whom they accused of being members of a feared Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, set up checkpoints around the neighborhood, indiscriminately pulled scores of Sunni Arabs from their homes and cars and killed them on the street. Other bodies were found with their hands bound behind their backs and gunshots in their heads, residents said.

But as often happens in Iraq, accounts of the violence varied widely. Residents and some Iraqi officials said in interviews that more than 35 people had been killed in the attacks. The Associated Press quoted Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq of the Iraqi police as saying that 41 bodies had been taken to hospitals. And an official at Yarmouk Hospital, the main medical center in western Baghdad, said in a telephone interview that at least 23 bodies had been delivered from Jihad, and 10 people had arrived wounded from the shootings.

But American and some Iraqi security officials said the casualty figures were far lower. Lt. Col. Jonathan B. Withington, spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, which oversees security around Baghdad, said the Iraqi police had reported finding only 11 bodies. It was unclear whether that toll included victims delivered to the morgue.

American and Iraqi security officials also said they could not confirm the accounts of the seemingly arbitrary street killings, and Colonel Withington said the Iraqi security forces were mobilized immediately after reports of “sporadic gunfire” in Jihad. By early afternoon, Iraqi and American forces had sealed off the neighborhood, officials said.

Several prominent Sunni Arab political and religious leaders criticized the Iraqi and American security forces for their inability to control the violence. In comments broadcast on Al Jazeera, Salam al-Zubaie, a deputy prime minister and a Sunni, called the events in Jihad “a real massacre,” and suggested that the country’s Shiite-led security forces were to blame because they had been infiltrated by militiamen. The government forces, he said, “coordinate with these filthy terror groups who are roaming the streets.”

Mr. Maliki’s office, in a statement, tried to distance itself from Mr. Zubaie’s comments, saying “they do not represent the government’s point of view.” Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, has vowed to crack down on militias regardless of sectarian affiliation and to eradicate militia influence from the government’s security forces.

In recent days, American and Iraqi troops have conducted several operations against the powerful Mahdi Army militia, which is loosely under the control of the influential Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and is regarded by Sunni Arab leaders as a main force behind many sectarian reprisal killings. Iraqi and American forces captured two Mahdi Army leaders on Friday and raided a suspected militia bastion on Saturday.

Some Jihad residents and Sunni Arab leaders accused the Mahdi Army of committing the killings on Sunday, but officials in Mr. Sadr’s organization denied that. “The Mahdi Army takes care of the national interest,” Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, told Al Jazeera. Mr. Sadr joined other government leaders in publicly calling for calm, and he requested an emergency session of Parliament to discuss the crisis and “prevent a sea of blood,” his office said in a statement.

In the rape-murder case, the American military today identified the five newly accused soldiers, who remain on active duty in Iraq. They are Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, Spec. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, news services reported. Mr. Yribe faces charges for his failure to report the incident, which took place March 12, while the others are being charged as participants.

The first to be implicated was Steven D. Green, a recently discharged private first class who was arrested June 30 in North Carolina.

An affidavit filed in the case against Mr. Green implicated five soldiers: Mr. Green; three soldiers who accompanied him to the farmhouse in the town of Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, where investigators say the rape and murders took place; and another soldier who remained at a checkpoint.

The formal accusations against the five soldiers set in motion the military’s court-martial process. According to military officials, the soldiers will now face an investigation under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a process similar to a grand jury hearing, which will determine whether enough evidence exists to put the men on trial.

Kirk Semple reported for this article from Baghdad and John O’Neil reported from New York. Reporting for this article was contributed by Khalid al-Ansary, Khalid W. Hassan, Hosham Hussein, Mona Mahmoud, Qais Mizher, Sahar Nageeb, Omar al-Neami and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Tikrit.

Lawmaker Wants Feds to Probe N.Y. Times
- By DEVLIN BARRETT, AP Writer  Sunday, June 25, 2006

(06-25) 20:04 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

A message left Sunday with Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was not immediately returned.

King's action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

"On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct," Specter told "Fox News Sunday."

Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should examine those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because the paper in December also disclosed a secret domestic wiretapping program.

He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."

When the paper chose to publish the story, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

In a letter posted on its Internet site Sunday that the Times said was sent to people who wrote to Keller, the editor said the administration argued "in a half-hearted way" that disclosure of the program "would lead terrorists to change tactics."

But Keller wrote that the Treasury Department has "trumpeted ... that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash."

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the paper acted responsibly, both in last week's report and in reporting last year about the wiretapping program.

"It's pretty clear to me that in this story and in the story last December that the New York Times did not act recklessly. They try to do whatever they can to take into account whatever security concerns the government has and they try to behave responsibly," Dalglish said. "I think in years to come that this is a story American citizens are going to be glad they had, however this plays out."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers.

The service generally does not detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. He also said the government would not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name.

He said the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/06/25/national/w185244D43.DTL

U.S.: 3 Guantanamo Inmates Commit Suicide
- By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP Writer  Saturday, June 10, 2006

(06-10) 12:56 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Three detainees at Guantanamo Bay apparently committed suicide amid protests of the U.S. military prison by inmates, the Defense Department said Saturday. They were the first reported deaths at the controversial detention center where suspected terrorists have been held for as long as 4 1/2 years.

Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found "unresponsive and not breathing in their cells" early Saturday, according to a statement from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive the prisoners, but failed.

The United States is holding about 460 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay, which has become a sore subject between President Bush and U.S. allies who otherwise are staunch supporters of his policies.

The Pentagon scheduled a briefing for later Saturday.

Bush, spending the weekend at Camp David, was notified of the incident. The State Department was consulting with the governments of the home countries of the three prisoners, whose names were not released.

The military said in its statement that "all lifesaving measures had been exhausted" in the attempt to revive the detainees. The remains were being treated "with the utmost respect," an issue important to Muslims. A cultural adviser was assisting the military.

Though the military termed the deaths suicides, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was investigating to establish the official cause and manner of death.

A U.N. panel said May 19 that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo violated the world's ban on torture. The panel said the United States should close the detention center.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are among those who also recently have urged the United States to close the prison.

On Friday, after the prison came up during a meeting with Fogh Rasmussen at Camp David, Bush said his goal is to do just that.

"We would like to end the Guantanamo — we'd like it to be empty," Bush said. But he added: "There are some that, if put out on the streets, would create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world. And, therefore, I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States."

Bush said his administration was waiting for the Supreme Court to rule whether he overstepped his authority in ordering the detainees to be tried by U.S. military tribunals.

The military's statement defended the prison, saying detainees pose a danger to the United States and its allies.

"They have expressed a commitment to kill Americans and our friends if released," the statement said. "These are not common criminals. They are enemy combatants being detained because they have waged war against our nation and they continue to pose a threat."

Moazzam Begg, 37, a British Muslim who spent three years in U.S. detention, including two years at Guantanamo before being released in 2005, told The Associated Press, "We all expected something like this but were not prepared. It's just awful. I hope the Bush administration will finally see this is wrong."

There have been increasing displays of defiance from Guantanamo Bay prisoners, who have been held for up to 4 1/2 years with many claiming their innocence.

Until now, Guantanamo officials have said there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the U.S. began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the number of suicide attempts is higher.

Those held at Guantanamo "have this incredible level of despair that they will never get justice. And now they're gone. And they died without ever having seen a court," Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a telephone interview from New York. Her group represents about 300 Guantanamo detainees.

She appealed to the administration "for immediate action to do the right thing. They should be taken to court or released. I don't think this country wants the stain of injustice on it for many years to come."

A spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office, who declined to be identified in keeping with department policy said: "Obviously, this is a very sad event."

On May 18, in one of the prison's most violent incidents, a detainee staged a suicide attempt to lure guards into a cellblock where they were attacked by prisoners armed with makeshift weapons, the military said. Earlier that day, two detainees overdosed on antidepressants they collected from other detainees and hoarded in their cells. The men have since recovered.

There also has been a hunger strike among detainees since August. The number of inmates refusing food dropped to 18 by last weekend from a high of 131. The military has at times used aggressive force-feeding methods, including a restraint chair.

Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London and Andrew Selsky in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/06/10/national/w113408D20.DTL

Moms-to-Be Delay Births on June 6, 2006
- By VERENA DOBNIK, AP Writer   Tuesday, June 6, 2006

(06-06) 15:53 PDT New York (AP) --

Around the country, some superstitious mothers-to-be took steps Tuesday to make sure their babies were not born on the most bedeviling of dates, 6-6-6.

In New York, "people are canceling left and right because of what today represents," said Liza Washington, an administrative assistant at Children's Hospital of the New York-Presbyterian Medical Center. More than a dozen deliveries were postponed because of 666, which is said to be the "Number of the Beast" in the Book of Revelation.

Many of the expectant mothers had been scheduled to deliver babies by Caesarean section or after doctors artificially induced labor.

Julie Haley, 33, of Reading, Mass., went into labor Monday. As of Tuesday afternoon, she still had not given birth.

"We were going to try to get it out before midnight or I was going to keep my legs closed," she said. "I don't want her to have that stigma for the rest of her life. When she gets older, her friends would say that anything bad would be because of her birthdate."

A Chicago obstetrician, Dr. Scott Pierce, performed a C-section on Monday on a woman who didn't want her son to be teased about his birthday and called names like Damien from the movie "The Omen," about a sinister boy who turns out to be the Antichrist. A remake of the classic horror film was released on Tuesday.

Pierce, who works at two Chicago-area hospitals, said he and his colleagues canceled any deliveries scheduled for Tuesday. But he added, "I'll do nothing that is ethically not indicated."

Pierce said that in general, about 25 percent of all births involve C-sections whose timing can be controlled "give or take a day." And about 30 percent of births are natural, but labor is artificially induced, allowing the timing to be controlled as well.

In Wichita, Kan., a woman suddenly realized that her delivery date was June 6, and asked her doctor to delay the birth, said Dr. James Whiddon of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Wichita Clinic.

Another baby was born early because of 666.

Tabitha Unternahrer of Wayland, Iowa, was supposed to have a C-section on Tuesday but called her doctor and had the date moved up. Her daughter, Taryn Reney, was born May 31.

"About two weeks ago I realized the date and called and told them it had to be moved," said Unternahrer, whose decision was triggered by a dream about complications in childbirth.

Rebecca Zerkin scheduled her baby girl's birth by C-section for the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year — on purpose.

"I did it because June 5 is my birthday and I wanted us to each have our own birthday," said the 35-year-old teacher, still on painkillers as she held her five-hour-old infant at Manhattan's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. As for the superstition, "I couldn't care less. The date is easy to remember."

Jill Haub, born on June 6, 1966, celebrated her 40th birthday on Tuesday. She is a mother of two boys and teaches sixth-graders in Yukon, Okla.

"When I tell people my birthday, the ones who are really brave give me the look and say, `That's scary!'" said Haub, a practicing Christian. "And I say, `Actually, I have an extra 6 — born on 6-6-66 — so that's four sixes. I'm good, not evil.'"

Associated Press writers Ling Liu in Boston and Natasha Metzler in Washington contributed to this story.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/06/06/national/a142422D30.DTL

step one:  pre-emptive attacks on sovereign nations based on lies

step two:  absurd failures, vicious murders and endless cover-ups

step three:  change the rules, so that the absurd failures, vicious murders and endless cover-ups are now referred to as smashing successes, necessary self-defense and true democracy  

step four:  silence anyone who disagrees with these thoughts

step five:  feel your brain leak out of your eyes ... and ears ....

PENTAGON TO DROP BASIC GENEVA RULE
But State Department objects to removal of protection from degrading treatment

- Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times / Monday, June 5, 2006

Washington -- The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to military officials, a step that would mark a potentially permanent shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision culminates a lengthy debate within the Department of Defense, but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed.

However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, Defense officials acknowledged.

For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing policies on detainees and interrogation, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide.

The process has been beset by debate and controversy, but the decision to omit Geneva Convention protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of U.S. detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq.

The directive on interrogations, a senior Defense official said, is being rewritten to create safeguards so that detainees are treated humanely but can still be questioned effectively.

President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of civilians last year at Haditha, Iraq, allegedly by U.S. Marines. But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations.

The detainee directive was due to be released in April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogations. But objections from several senators on other Field Manual issues forced a delay. Senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques for unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as opposed to traditional prisoners of war.

The lawmakers argue that differing standards of treatment allowed by the Field Manual would violate a broadly supported anti-torture measure advanced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain last year pushed Congress to ban torture and cruel treatment and to establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for treatment of all detainees. Despite administration opposition, the measure passed and became law.

For decades, it was the official policy of the U.S. military to follow minimum standards for treating detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, President Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Among the directives being rewritten following Bush's 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military lawyers and other Defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the document to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture. However, the move to restore U.S. adherence to Article 3 was opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney's office and by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, government sources said.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/05/MNGSVJ8H171.DTL

timmay's summer to do list:

1. Hank Williams III: June 8. Frenetic hellbilly punk from the grandson of the country legend. $22.50. The Fillmore, 1805 Fillmore St. (415) 346-6000. www.thefillmore.com.

2. Echo & the Bunnymen: June 10. Playing the main stage with a few other "newer bands" at this year's Live 105 BFD. $31.50-$49.50. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000. www.shorelineamp.com.

3. Stiff Little Fingers: June 16. "The Irish Clash!!!" ... 'nough said. $20. Slim's, 333 11th St. (415) 255-0333. www.slims-sf.com.

4. Kool Keith / Dr. Octagon: June 17. "The Real Black Elvis Himselvis!" $15. The Mezzanine, 444 Jessie St. (415) 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com.

5. The Reverend Horton Heat: July 5. Psychobilly/rockabilly fun with the Reverend. $8. The Blank Club, 44 S. Almaden Blvd., San Jose. (408) 292-5265. www.blankclub.com. (Also at Bimbo's, July 8).

6. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts: July 8. "I love rock 'n' roll ... and I love Joan Jett!!!" (performing with 45,342,478 other bands on this summer's Warped Tour). $29.99. Piers 30/32, Embarcadero and Main. (415) 421-8497. www.warpedtour.com.

7. Greg Graffin: July 17. Punk polemics from your favorite "21st Century Digital Boy." $13-$15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St. (415) 885-0750. www.gamh.com.

8. The Avengers: July 21. "It's the American in me that makes me ..." go to this show. $12. Cafe Du Nord, 2170 Market St. (415) 861-5016. www.cafedunord.com.

9. Ween: July 22. "Push the little daisies" with Dean and Gene! (with awesome opening acts: the Flaming Lips and the Go! Team). $41.50. The Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley. (510) 548-3010. www.apeconcerts.com.

10. Buzzcocks: July 27. Concise bitterness from Manchester's pop punk originals. $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie St. (415) 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com.

11. The Adolescents: Aug. 16. O.C. punk's not dead! $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St. (415) 621-4455. www.bottomofthehill.com.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/01/NSG2SJ31IQ1.DTL

Bush troubled by reports of Iraq killings

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer  Wed May 31, 2:14 PM ET

President Bush said Wednesday he was troubled by allegations that U.S. Marines had killed unarmed Iraqi civilians and that, "If in fact laws were broken, there will be punishment."

It was Bush's first public comment on allegations that Marines killed about two dozen unarmed Iraqis in the western city of Haditha last November.

Bush said he had discussed Haditha with Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "He's a proud Marine. And nobody is more concerned about these allegations than the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is full of honorable people who understand the rules of war."

"If in fact these allegations are true," Bush said, "the Marine Corps will work hard to make sure that that culture — that proud culture — will be reinforced. And that those who violated the law, if they did, will be punished."

The president was asked about the Iraq allegations during an Oval Office photo opportunity with the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.

"I am troubled by the initial news stories," Bush said. "I'm mindful that there's a thorough investigation going on. If in fact, laws were broken, there will be punishment."

The killings at Haditha, a city that has been plagued by insurgents, came after a bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Residents said Marines then went into nearby houses and shot members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl.

At first, the U.S. military described what happened as an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol, with a roadside bombing and subsequent firefight killing 15 civilians, eight insurgents and a U.S. Marine. The statement said the 15 civilians were killed by the blast, a claim the residents strongly denied.

Military investigators have evidence that points toward unprovoked murders by Marines, a senior defense official said last week.

If confirmed as unjustified killings, the episode could be the most serious case of criminal misconduct by U.S. troops during three years of combat in Iraq. Until now the most infamous occurrence was the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse involving Army soldiers, which came to light in April 2004 and which Bush said he considered to be the worst U.S. mistake of the entire war.

Once the military investigation is completed, perhaps in June, it will be up to a senior Marine commander in Iraq to decide whether to press charges of murder or other violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday there is no firm date for release of the investigative report. But he said he suspects it will come out in "a matter of weeks, not a matter of months" and include photographic evidence.

London, Mar 28: A family brewery in the Czech Republic has opened the world’s first beer health centre in its cellar. The Chodovar Family brewery in Chodova Plana offers beer baths, beer massages and beer cosmetics.

The cellar has seven huge Victorian style baths where visitors can swim in beer while enjoying a pint poured at a bathside bar.

"Beer can treat a range of conditions, particularly skin conditions, and the health centre should appeal to men who are put off by 'posh' traditional spas. I have heard of some places in other countries where people can swim in beer but it's just a gimmick. We believe in the healing properties of beer and we offer the full range of treatments. We are a fully-fledged beer spa," Ananova quoted Jiri Plevka, the owner as saying.

The guests are charged 80 pounds for weekend packages, and can indulge in a range of health treatments including beer wraps, starting at 12 pounds per session.

Bureau Report

(05-27) 12:39 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

The U.S. military is bracing for a major scandal over the alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha — charges so serious they could threaten President Bush's effort to rally support at home for an increasingly unpopular war.

The investigation involves Marines based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., who are members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, military officials said.

And while the case has attracted little attention so far in Iraq, it still could enflame hostility to the U.S. presence just as Iraq's new government is getting established, and complicate efforts by moderate Sunni Arab leaders to reach out to their community — the bedrock of the insurgency.

U.S. lawmakers have been told the criminal investigation will be finished in about 30 days. But a Pentagon official said investigators believe Marines committed unprovoked murder in the deaths of about two dozen people at Haditha in November.

With a political storm brewing, the top U.S. Marine, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, is headed to Iraq to personally deliver the message that troops should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."

Haditha is not the only case pending: On Wednesday, the military announced an investigation into allegations that Marines killed a civilian April 26 near Fallujah. The statement gave no further details except that "several service members" had been sent back to the United States "pending the results of the criminal investigation."

Last July, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Samir al-Sumaidaie, accused the Marines of killing his 21-year-old cousin in cold blood during a search of his family's home in Haditha, a city of about 90,000 people along the Euphrates River 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The military ordered a criminal investigation but the results have not been announced.

Together, the cases present the most serious challenge to U.S. handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which Bush cited Thursday as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq."

"What happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder," said Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch. "It has the potential to blow up in the U.S. military's face."

He said that "the Haditha massacre will go down as Iraq's My Lai," a reference to the Vietnam War incident in which American soldiers slaughtered up to 500 civilians in 1968.

The Haditha case involves both the alleged killing of civilians and a purported cover-up of the events that unfolded Nov. 19.

That day, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas, was killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha, a Sunni Arab city considered among the most hostile areas of Iraq.

After the blast, insurgents attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol with small-arms fire, triggering a gunbattle that left eight insurgents and 15 Iraqi civilians dead, the Marines said in a statement issued the following day.

That version stood for four months until a videotape shot by an Iraqi journalism student surfaced, obtained by Time magazine and then by Arab television stations. The tape showed the bodies of women and children, some in their nightclothes.

Although the tape did not prove Marines were responsible, the military began an investigation. Residents came forward with claims that Marines entered two homes and killed 15 people, including a 3-year-old girl and a 76-year-old man — more than four hours after the roadside bombing.

It isn't clear if questions have been raised about the eight slain people that the Marines described as insurgents.

In March, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said about a dozen Marines were under investigation for possible war crimes in the incident. Three officers from the unit involved have been relieved of their posts.

Such incidents have reinforced the perception among many Iraqis who believe American troops are trigger-happy — a characterization U.S. officers strongly dispute.

"America in the view of many Iraqis has no credibility. We do not believe what they say is correct," said Sheik Sattar al-Aasaf, a tribal leader in Anbar province, which includes Haditha. "U.S. troops are a very well-trained and when they shoot, it isn't random but due to an order to kill Iraqis. People say they are the killers."

Ayda Aasran, a deputy human rights minister, said Iraqis should be allowed to investigate such cases — something the U.S. command has refused to permit.

Sunni political leaders will find it difficult to defend U.S. actions, even those aimed at establishing the truth, if they want to maintain their position as leaders of the Iraqi minority that provides most of the insurgents.

Even if criminal charges are brought in the Haditha incident, Sunni insurgents are likely to claim the case is simply a charade and argue that the Marines will escape serious punishment.

Haditha, site of a major hydroelectric dam, has long been considered a tough case. It is among a string of Euphrates Valley towns used by insurgents and foreign fighters to infiltrate from Syria to reach Baghdad and the Sunni heartland.

Many Marines have complained to journalists that they conduct repeated sweeps through villages to drive out the insurgents, who then reappear when the Americans leave. That has bred a sense of frustration among troops fighting a difficult war with no end in sight.

Reporters who embedded in Haditha several months before the alleged massacre said Marines considered the town as enemy territory, with frequent roadside bombings. During patrols inside the city, Marines treated inhabitants like terrorists, raiding their homes.

An Associated Press journalist who traveled in Haditha last June with a Marine unit not involved in the November killings saw a Marine urinate on the kitchen floor of a home and on another occasion saw insults chalked in English on the gate of an Arab home. The reporter asked a Marine commander about the incident and was told it would be investigated.

Last August, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that Haditha was under the control of religious extremists who enforced their own strict interpretation of Islamic law — including decapitations of people suspected of collaborating with the Americans.

"This is a war in which the distinction between killing the enemy and massacring civilians is not always completely obvious," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "Counterinsurgency operations are particularly prone to the killing of people who, in retrospect, are judged to have been innocent civilians, but who in the heat of battle seemed to be the enemy."

Some analysts, however, say the killings of civilians also reflect frustration among young troops fighting a difficult war with no end in sight. They say these young fighters have been thrust into an alien culture for repeated tours in a war whose strategy many of them do not understand.

"What we're seeing more of now, and these incidents will increase monthly, is the end result of fuzzy, imprecise national direction combined with situational ethics at the highest levels of this government," said retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner, a former planner at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Robert H. Reid is correspondent at large for The Associated Press and has reported frequently from Iraq since 2003.

Associated Press writer Jacob Silberberg contributed to this report.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/05/27/state/n123935D89.DTL

- By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer
Monday, May 15, 2006

(05-15) 06:09 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

The BBC has admitted it was taken for a ride by a cabbie. The network has apologized to its viewers for a studio mix up that resulted in a cab driver appearing on live television as an expert on Internet music downloads.

"We interviewed the wrong person," a British Broadcasting Corp. spokeswoman said Monday while speaking on condition of anonymity in line with company policy. "We apologize to viewers for any confusion."

The case of mistaken identity occurred on May 8 — the day Britain's High Court awarded Apple Computer a victory in a lawsuit against Apple Corps, The Beatles' commercial arm.

In a reaction piece to the verdict that is now circulating widely on the Internet, BBC News 24 consumer affairs correspondent Karen Bowerman ostensibly welcomed computer expert Guy Kewney.

As Bowerman introduced the apparent expert, there's a moment when the still unidentified driver realized the mistake. He scrunched his face up in a grimace and in panic tried to open his mouth as if to explain.

"Were you suprised by this verdict today?" Bowerman asked.

"I'm very surprised to see the verdict come on me because I was not expecting that," he said in a heavy French accent, blinking in the studio lights. "When I came, they told me something else."

Growing more confident, he gamely went on to deliver his opinion on the future of music downloads following the landmark verdict.

Meanwhile, the real Kewney, who was waiting to be taken to the studio, looked up on a monitor and found another man ensconced in the interviewee's chair.

"What would you feel, if while you were sitting in that rather chilly reception area, you suddenly saw yourself not sitting in reception, but live, on TV? A bit surprised?" Kewney wrote on his Web log.

Kewney, who could not be reached for comment Monday, said on his blog that he was amused at first — but then considered that viewers would think he did not know his subject, hurting his reputation.

Though the BBC did not elaborate on how the mistake occurred, Kewney wrote in his blog that a studio manager, "wringing his hands as if he wanted to suddenly take the day off, retrospectively," had called the reception area — rather than the stage door — and was told the Kewney was there.

Producers apparently realized by the end of the interview that something had gone wrong — and, after they had gone off the air, asked the cabbie if there was a problem.

"He said: 'Well, it was OK, but I was a bit rushed,' Kewney wrote on his blog.

On the Web:  www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/2701

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/05/15/international/i060818D36.DTL