According to the study, released on 9 March, the most worrying trend was the large number of kidnappings of women, many of whom reported being sexually abused or tortured. While such occurrences were largely unknown during the Saddam Hussein regime, more than 2,000 women have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2003, the report noted.

“Money has become more important than lives, and kidnapping women – easy targets because of their weakness – is a quicker way to get a good ransom,” said Muhammad.
The report also noted that many Iraqi Women were also being sold as sex workers abroad, mainly to the illicit markets of Yemen, Syria, Jordan and the Gulf States. Victims usually discover their fate only after they have been lured outside the country by false promises.
alertnet.org

BAGHDAD: Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held the US forces responsible on Monday for the bombings in Sadr city, one of the poorest districts of Baghdad, that claimed over 40 lives.

“I hold the occupying forces responsible for orchestrating this event,” Muqtada told a press conference in Najaf.

He said terrorists carried out the bombing “under US air cover” arguing that the halt of telephone connections before the incident was proof of the cooperation between the terrorists and the occupier to “destabilise the security of this Shia region.
indiatimes.com

Iraq: Permanent US Colony
Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?

Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?

Why are we hearing such ludicrous and outrageous statements from the highest ranking military general in the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who when asked how things were going in Iraq on March 9th in an interview on “Meet the Press” said, “I’d say they’re going well. I wouldn’t put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they’re going very, very well from everything you look at.”

I wonder if there is a training school, or at least talking point memos for these Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because Pace’s predecessor, Gen. Richard Myers, told Senator John McCain last September that “In a sense, things are going well [in Iraq].”

General Pace also praised the Iraqi military, saying, “Now there are over 100 [Iraqi] battalions in the field.”

Wow! General Pace must have waved his magic wand and materialized all these 99 new Iraqi battalions that are diligently keeping things safe and secure in occupied Iraq. Because according to the top US general in Iraq, General George Casey, not long ago there was only one Iraqi battalion (about 500-600 soldiers) capable of fighting on its own in Iraq.

During a late-September 2005 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Casey acknowledged that the Pentagon estimate of three Iraqi battalions last June had shrunk to one in September. That is less than six months ago.

I thought it would be a good idea to find someone who is qualified to discuss how feasible it would be to train 99 Iraqi battalions in less than six months, as Pace now claims has occurred.

VALPARAISO, Chile (Reuters) – Condoleezza Rice knew coca would top the agenda in her meeting with Bolivia’s new president, but she likely wasn’t expecting to get the real thing.

At the end of their 25-minute meeting, President Evo Morales presented the U.S. secretary of state with an Andean guitar that bore a coca-leaf inlay.

“The gift was well received. We will just have to check with our customs to see what rules apply. We certainly hope we can bring it back (to Washington),” said a senior State Department official who attended the meeting.

Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, came to prominence as a leader of coca farmers who want more freedom to grow coca, which is the main ingredient in cocaine but is also used legally for traditional medicines and in teas.

The fight against cocaine is the main source of bilateral friction between the United States and Bolivia, the world’s third-biggest cocaine producer.

Rice told Morales, “I’m a musician you know,” and strummed the instrument, a typical Bolivian lacquered handicraft with five pairs of strings.

It was unclear whether she immediately realized what adorned it.
news.yahoo.com

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 10 — The last large Colombian right-wing paramilitary force gave up its guns Friday as part of a peace deal negotiated with the government.

Rodrigo Tovar, alias “Jorge 40,” the paramilitary leader on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, led 2,500 of his troops in the demobilization ceremony.

About 28,000 right-wing fighters have accepted the government’s offer of reduced jail terms for such crimes as massacre, torture and cocaine smuggling.

The ceremony in the northern town of La Mesa was attended by indigenous leaders whose people have been caught for decades in the cross-fire between the paramilitary fighters and left-wing rebels.

The paramilitaries have committed some of the worst atrocities of Colombia’s guerrilla war, in which they have collaborated with members of the army to fight the rebels.

Opposition politicians and human rights groups say the demobilization is a smokescreen that allows the paramilitaries to secure benefits from the government without being forced to dismantle their cocaine-smuggling and extortion networks.
washingtonpost.com

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, James Risen, Free Press, 256 pages

James Risen’s State of War has opened a Pandora’s Box for the Bush administration that no amount of howling, scowling, or bogus terrorist-attack warnings will be able to close. Risen’s revelations on pervasive National Security Agency warrantless spying on Americans shred the final pretenses to legality of the Bush administration. Now the debate is simply whether, as Bush and his supporters claim, the president is effectively above the law and the Constitution during a time of (perpetual) war.

Risen has been a national security reporter for the New York Times for many years. He was not one of the Times reporters who simply recycled hokum from the White House Iraq Group. In October 2002, he wrote a piece shooting down the Bush administration’s claims that Mohammad Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, one of the favorite neocon justifications for attacking Iraq.

Risen had the story on NSA wiretapping before the 2004 election, but the Times, under pressure from the administration, sat on the piece for at least 14 months. The paper’s timidity may have awarded George W. Bush a second term as president. After the Times finally published Risen’s story in mid-December, Bush seized upon the exposé to portray himself as heroically rising above the statute book to protect the American people. The administration has been boasting about its “terrorism surveillance program” ever since.

Bush announced that “the NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people.” Except that the program also listens to calls from inside the United States to abroad. And, in some cases, it has wiretapped calls exclusively within the United States. No one knows how flimsy the standard may be that the administration is using for associating people with terrorist suspects—consumption of more than a pound of hummus a week?

Risen revealed that the “NSA is now eavesdropping on as many as five hundred people at any given time” in the United States. Bush’s “secret presidential order has given the NSA the freedom to peruse … the email of millions of Americans.” The NSA’s program has been christened the “J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner.”

In 1978, responding to scandals involving political spying on Americans in the name of counterespionage, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The act prohibited wiretapping of domestic phone calls without a warrant. The special FISA court, however, sets a much lower standard for securing search warrants than is required by other federal courts.

The FISA court has approved almost every one of the more than 17,000 search warrant requests the feds have submitted since 1978. Federal agencies can even submit retroactive requests up to 72 hours after they begin surveilling someone. The number of FISA-approved wiretaps has doubled since 2001. Yet the Bush administration whines that FISA makes the U.S. government a helpless giant against terrorists.

Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that the warrantless wiretaps are based on Congress’s authorization to use military force against the people who attacked the United States. But if that measure actually nullified all domestic limits on the president’s power, then Americans have been living under martial law since Sept. 18, 2001, when Congress passed the resolution. Bush and Gonzales also assert that the president has inherent power to tap phone calls, thanks to Article II of the Constitution. This is the same “commander-in-chief override” that Gonzales invoked after the Abu Ghraib scandal to justify the Bush administration ignoring the federal Anti-Torture Act.
americanconservativemag.com

The death of Slobodan Milosevic was shrouded in mystery and deepening controversy last night as Dutch pathologists examined his corpse and it emerged that he had claimed he was being slowly killed by doctors.
Milosevic’s body was removed from the detention centre at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to the Netherlands forensic institute for a postmortem examination and toxicological testing.

Last night a preliminary postmortem report said that he had died of heart failure. His remains were to be released to his family today.

Yesterday the 64-year-old former Serbian and Yugoslav president’s lawyer revealed a six-page letter – dated last Friday, 24 hours before his death – that Milosevic wrote to the Russian government alleging he was being deliberately administered the wrong drugs for his illnesses.
“Persons that are giving me the drug for the treatment of leprosy surely cannot be treating me. Especially those persons against whom I have defended my country in the war and who also have an interest in silencing me can likewise not be treating me,” Milosevic said in a handwritten letter to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Milosevic had a long history of heart disease, hypertension and high blood pressure. He was also found to be ignoring Dutch medical advice while on trial for the past four years and to be taking drugs other than those prescribed. His family has a history of suicide; his parents and a favourite uncle killed themselves.

Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor in The Hague, said yesterday that Milosevic, found dead in his cell on Saturday morning, might have killed himself. “According to our valuations, [the trial] would have ended with a verdict requesting he be shut away for life. Perhaps he wanted to avoid all that,” Ms Del Ponte told the Italian paper, la Repubblica. But tribunal sources said the most likely explanation for his death was natural causes.

While Milosevic claimed in his letter that he was being deliberately administered the wrong medicine, he also has a record of taking unprescribed drugs and refusing treatment advised by his Dutch doctors.
guardian.co.uk

Fifteen months after he was denied high office by the youthful protesters of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Viktor Yanukovich is on the brink of an extraordinary comeback.

The pro-Moscow candidate, whose presidential ambitions were dashed after the disputed December 2004 poll, scents victory in the parliamentary elections in two weeks. Arguing that Ukraine made a terrible mistake by turning its back on its traditional ally, Russia, to woo the European Union, his Party of the Regions looks set to win the most seats – making him the king-maker in an expected new coalition government.

Mr Yanukovich, who was acting prime minister from November 2002 until December 2004, is too cautious to lay claim openly to the office again, but his message is clear: he is back.

“We aim to get power and overcome Ukraine’s crisis and stabilise the country with a team of able and talented people,” he said at his campaign headquarters, a 19th-century mansion in the Ukrainian capital.

In a swipe at President Victor Yushchenko, who seeks links with the EU and Nato, he said: “The government talks about European integration and the benefits that it will bring at a time when many people in Ukraine wonder why their standards of living are deteriorating. The country is living in a state of permanent crisis.”
telegraph.co.uk

THE man likely to become Israel’s next defence minister does not shy away from talking about his past.
“I killed many Arabs, probably more than Hamas fighters killed Jews, and more than anybody else, but all in order to secure Israeli lives,” said Admiral Ami Ayalon, the Labour party’s candidate for the most difficult portfolio in Israeli politics.

There are two weeks before the general election, and victory for either Labour or the Kadima party is expected to ensure that the former commando and head of Shin Bet, the internal security service, will take over from Shaul Mofaz, the incumbent, in a coalition.

Ayalon is considered a dove despite his 32 years of military service and his near five-year stint at the helm of the intelligence agency. He is a straight talker, and wants a comprehensive peace settlement with the Palestinians even under a Hamas leadership.

“I’d be willing to negotiate with Hamas if the organisation accepts the idea of a two-state solution,” he said in an interview last week.

Ayalon, 61, is regarded as a fresh thinker: he believes Israel should establish an “axis of pragmatism” with the regional countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel — Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.

“This is the whole idea — to create this pragmatic axis which will be supported by the European Union and the international community,” he said. It is part of his strategy to woo the Palestinians from the more extremist policies of Hamas. “Seventy per cent of those who voted for Hamas were not Hamas believers but voted against the corruption in the Palestinian authority,” he said. “If we establish this axis it will break Hamas and we will see the pragmatist forces among the Palestinians.”

Ayalon is also open-minded on the controversy over the division of Jerusalem, which he envisages as an “open city” and capital of two states. Jerusalem should be shared between Arabs and Jews. “Arab neighbourhoods will come under Palestinian sovereignty, Jewish ones under Israeli sovereignty,” he said. He has even suggested that if a common solution could be agreed with Hamas on the future of the West Bank, the hated security wall currently under construction could be taken down.
timesonline.co.uk

Peretz: We’ll pass law to pay settlers to leave voluntarily
Labor Chairman Amir Peretz declared Saturday that a government controlled by his party would not waive the negotiating stage of West Bank withdrawal, and would begin its term by passing a law that would pay West Bank settlers who volunteer to leave the territories, in order to reduce the number of settlers prior to any evacuation plan.

Peretz was responding to an interview in Friday’s Haaretz with Acting Prime Minister and Kadima head Yossi Olmert, who promised to draw permanent borders for the state.

“In contrast to Olmert, we do not intend to waive the negotiations stage,” Peretz said. “Kadima and Olmert say that Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] is irrelevant and sanctify unilateralism. We prefer to hold negotiations and to use unilateralism as a last resort. A unilateral step on the West Bank will not achieve international support either, since there won’t be a return to the 1967 borders and the world will view it as an attempt to set boundaries unilaterally.”

Peretz emphasized that a government led by him would bring about the rapid evacuation of the illegal West Bank outposts and the completion of the separation fence. In parallel, it would pass an “evacuation-compensation” law to pay settlers who leave the West Bank voluntarily. The idea is to thin out the settler population even before a disengagement plan is approved.

Police: Hamas is seeking control of East Jerusalem villages
Hamas is attempting to turn the Arab villages in East Jerusalem into “Hamas villages,” according to Jerusalem police.

Police officials said Hamas is seeking to increase its control of these villages in order to hold coordinated demonstrations there, among other things. This is only one of a series of measures being taken by the organization in order to heighten its presence in the capital in light of its election victory.

The Jerusalem police are already planning to counter Hamas intentions to establish an “alternative Orient House” in the Arab eastern city. Orient House, which had served as a Palestinian Authority government center, was closed by the Israeli government a few years ago for breaking the law.

“Hamas is a terror organization,” Jerusalem Police Chief Ilan Franco said last week. “It is still classified as a terror organization, and that is how the Jerusalem Police relates to it. Hamas’ activities in general, and in Jerusalem in particular, are prohibited.”

Franco said the police would not permit the reestablishment of Orient House or the creation of Hamas villages in East Jerusalem.

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals have gathered under tight security for a major conference to discuss a peaceful resolution to the 22-year-old Kurdish conflict in the country’s southeast.

Police imposed strict security measures after nationalists threatened to disrupt the two-day event, designed to promote ways of ending a conflict that has long impeded Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.

Officers searched participants at the entrance of the venue Saturday, the private Bilgi University, and several dozen riot police were on guard outside the campus.

More than 45 Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, politicians and journalists of various political convictions were taking part in the conference, entitled “The Kurdish question in Turkey: ways for a democratic settlement”.

Organizers said the conference could adopt a final declaration on Sunday, appealing to the government for more reforms to resolve the conflict, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.

The conflict has led to allegations of gross human rights violations on both sides, ravaged the already meager economy of the region and forced hundreds of thousands of already poor peasants to migrate into urban slum areas.
news.yahoo.com

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 6 — Nearly a year ago, not long after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, who was twice prime minister of Lebanon, Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon, unleashing a wave of patriotism here that prompted many to say that the Lebanese might finally be able to take control of their destiny.

But the intensity of the moment and the rush of emotions eclipsed at least one important and largely unanswerable question: With Syria gone, or at least its troops gone, who would fill the power vacuum?

At the time, Iran did not appear to be the answer. But that is what is happening, according to government officials, political leaders and political analysts here.

Iran, long a powerful player in Lebanon, has been able to increase its influence, partly through its ties to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. That has given Tehran a stronger hand to play in its confrontation with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program.

Should the nuclear showdown go badly for Iran, the government could rely on its surrogates in Lebanon as well as its influence in Iraq, or use oil for a weapon. In Lebanon, the Iranians could contribute to the kind of retribution they have promised as a payback, from a strike across the border into Israel, to a more forceful flexing that could paralyze the Lebanese government, political analysts and government officials said.
nytimes.com

The Times is war pimpin’.

Syria ignores US sanction on its bank
Syria on Friday brushed aside the U.S. decision to sever links to the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria (CBS).

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday barred American financial institutions from opening or maintaining an account for or on behalf of CBS because the bank “has been used by terrorists” to move funds and has laundered money from the “illicit sale of Iraqi oil”.

In a statement to the official SANA news agency, CBS Director General Dureid Dorgham said the U.S. decision “was taken for political reasons to affect Syria” without “logical evidence”.

Dorgham pointed out that it has been a “binding decision” to the U.S. banks even before the official announcement.

Meanwhile, he expressed confidence in some other friendly banks which had rejected the U.S. decision to sanction the Syrian bank, noting that these banks would not submit to it.

“Those banks consider the U.S. decision as a political one and is binding to the U.S. banks,” he said.

Syria switched state institutions’ foreign currency from U.S. dollar to the euro for all transactions a month ago in case Washington imposes more sanctions on it, Dorgham said.

Regarding money laundering, Dorgham said that the bank has formed a specialized committee for this matter and applied all procedures accredited in different countries of the world.

On the Iraqi money, Dorgham said: ” The bank has performed its work in this regard and we consider that the Iraqi official circles are the only authorized party to discuss such issue for they are careful on their interests.”

Washington seeks explanation for Spain’s Syria talks
MADRID (AFP) – Washington is demanding to know why Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos held a meeting in Damascus with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Mouallem.

El Pais quoted “diplomatic sources” as saying US ambassador in Madrid Eduardo Aguirre and another high-ranking US diplomat, Shirin Tahir Kheli, had expressed concern about the rare visit by a senior member of a Western government to Syria.

The Spanish government responded by saying it was “opposed to the strategy of isolating Damascus”, El Pais reported Saturday.

“Washington seeks explanation…Washington is demanding to know why…”