Marc Perkel Rantz

Execution excuse handed out before execition - Whoops!

Than New York Times printed a Very Interesting Article about the cease-fire between occupation forces and the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, the 31-year-old radical cleric

Apparently in spite of this cease file - American troops attacked a police station where there was heavy fighting. At some point they were passing out flyers containing two different excuses on why Moktada al-Sadr was killed in fighting. But - Moktada al-Sadr was not killed at all. They already had the flyers printed with the excuse before the planned killing but the killing never happened and someone screwed up and passed out the excuse anyhow.

The only thing I hate worse than liars is bad liars. BushCo needs to get his lying right. Here's the story:

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Iraqi officials have said the Americans were persuaded to compromise with Mr. Sadr last week by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential cleric. Ayatollah Sistani lives close to the Shrine of Ali, and he had been growing increasingly concerned over the battles near that shrine and two other shrines in Karbala. On May 21, days after residents of Karbala protested in the streets at the urging of Ayatollah Sistani, American forces and insurgents withdrew from the city's center.

The cease-fire reached in Najaf on Thursday did not require Mr. Sadr to disband his militia or to submit to an arrest warrant that an Iraqi judge had issued in connection with the killing in April of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, an American-backed cleric who had returned from exile to Najaf.

Meanwhile on Sunday, people in the streets of Najaf were handed mysterious fliers with Mr. Sadr's picture that said "Moktada (al Sadr) was followed by the Iraqi police for his ties to the slaying of Khoei, and due to violent actions he was killed during an attempt to arrest him."

Another flier had a photo of Iraqi policemen and the words "The Justice Ministry tried to arrest Mr. Sadr, but he and his followers resisted fiercely, which drove the Iraqi police to defend themselves."

The fliers appeared to have been made by Iraq's Justice Ministry or its allies to be handed out in case Iraqi policemen killed Mr. Sadr. Somehow, they were distributed prematurely. There were no reports of Mr. Sadr's death.

Mr. Sadr's office also issued a conciliatory statement to Sadr al-Din al-Kubanchi, a prominent cleric linked to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, an influential Shiite party. On Friday, gunmen shot at Mr. Kubanchi outside the Shrine of Ali, but he was unhurt. Members of Mr. Sadr's militia captured one of the attackers, but did not turn him over to the Badr Organization, Sciri's armed wing.

That led Sciri officials to accuse Mr. Sadr and his militia of organizing the attack and then trying to cover it up. Mr. Kubanchi has denounced both Mr. Sadr and the occupation forces in recent sermons.

In his statement, Mr. Sadr denied any role in the attack. "I send my greetings and my willingness to meet you and my brothers in Sciri and the Badr Organization," he said. "You can hold your weekly Friday Prayer, and I am ready to attend it hand in hand with you to ensure your safety."

Church of Reality - Our Guide to War

I have written the Church of Reality's Guide to War. Unlike some might expect - the Church of Reality does not oppose all war. It does however oppose all unjust war and it requires every person to make a determination as to if the war is just or not. Our slogan is to think before you fight.

Realists are always the first ones on the battlefield. We are there before the war starts to make sure war never begins in the first place. Realists have won more wars than any other religion. But no one sings songs about the wars that never happened.

The Church of Reality is a religion based on believing in everything that is real.

NY Times - Weapons of Mass Distraction

Well - sort of. The New York Times is trying to say they made a mistake blaming their twisted coverage of Iraq on a few low level reporters and supervisors not paying attention to what they were doing. Sound familiar? The NYT is using the Abu Graib defense - it wasn't a conspiracy - the higher ups didn't know - just a few bad apples at the bottom caused all the trouble. But unlike Abu Graib - the New York Times isn't even going to court martial the offending reporters! I'm surprised that they didn't compare the number of words they got right to the number they got wrong.

The truth is that the NYT was a full partner with the Bush administration in promoting and selling this war. Over 800 of our soldiers died and thousands more wounded and tens of thousands of innocent Iraquis were killed not only by Bush - but by his media conspirators. The highly profitable paper got their tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the future of America.

This was no simple mistake that one can simply say sorry to and walk away. The act was deliberate - calculated - and in concert with CNN, Fox News, the Moonie owned Washington Times, and the rest of the Republican controlled media who publicly fired and humiliated journalists who wrote about the truth and refused to join the NeoCon's Crusade of Misinformation. In my view the NYT has rizen to the level of criminal conduct.

The reporter for whom the NYT is apologizing for are still employed there and are busy bringing you more right wing disinformation. For all we know - they are the onse who wrote the apology piece - which is little more than a propaganda ploy to regain the reader's trust so that they can lie to you again. The laest the NYT can do is fire the reporters who brought America this war the way they fire reporters who bring America the Truth!

Fortunately through all of this it has turned out that the truth about what is really happening can be found on the Internet by independent journalists like Bartcop who unlike the "legitimate" media actually got the stories right. ne thing to be learned from the whole affair is - who do you trust? Who gets the story right? And it would seem that journalistic resources don't mean anything if the organization has more of a commitment to a political ajenda - as the New York Times does - than it is commited to the truth.

New York Times apology below as swiped from their web site.

From he New York Times

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector — his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri — to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

The following is a sampling of articles published by The Times about the decisions that led the United States into the war in Iraq, and especially the issue of Iraq's weapons:

The alleged Iraqi terrorist training camps, and Al Qaeda connection:

• October 26, 2001: Czechs Confirm Iraqi Agent Met With Terror Ringleader

• November 8, 2001: Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism

The accounts of the terrorist training camp have not subsequently been verified.


On the subject of the meeting in Prague, a Times follow-up cast serious doubt:

• October 21, 2002: Prague Discounts An Iraqi Meeting

The hidden weapons facilities:

• December 20, 2001: Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites for Chemical and Nuclear Arms

According to Knight Ridder News, this scientist was taken back to Iraq earlier this year for a tour of sites where he worked. None of the sites showed evidence of illegal weapons activity.

• Follow-up: January 24, 2003: Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq

The aluminum tubes:
•
September 8, 2002: U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest For A-Bomb Parts

• September 13, 2002: White House Lists Iraq Steps To Build Banned Weapons

• January 10, 2003: Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited By Bush

• January 28, 2003: Report's Findings Undercut U.S. Argument

For a discussion of this coverage by Michael R. Gordon, chief military correspondent of The Times, see this letter from April 8, 2004.

The Iraqi scientist and destruction of weapons:

• April 21, 2003:Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert

Follow-ups:

• April 23, 2003: Focus Shifts From Weapons To the People Behind Them

• April 24: U.S.-Led Forces Occupy Baghdad Complex Filled with Chemical Agents

• July 20, 2003: A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons

The "biological weapons labs":

This is one example of a claim that was quickly and prominently challenged by additional reporting

• May 21, 2003: U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms

The story left the impression that the Administration claims represented a consensus, because we did not know otherwise. By June 7, however, the same reporters, having dug deeper, published a front-page story describing the strong views of dissenting intelligence analysts that the trailers were not bio-weapons labs, and suggesting that the Administration may have strained to make the evidence fit its case for war. (Last Sunday, Mr. Powell conceded that the C.I.A. was misled about the trailers, apparently by an Iraqi defector.)

• June 7, 2003: Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use

• June 26, 2003: Agency Disputes C.I.A. View on Trailers as Weapons Labs

Raising doubts about intelligence:

Following are examples of stories that cast doubt on key claims about Iraq's weapons programs, and on the reliability of some defectors.

• October 9, 2002: Aides Split on Assessment of Iraq's Plans

• October 24, 2002: A C.I.A. Rival; Pentagon Sets up Intelligence Unit

• March 23, 2003: C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports

• July 20, 2003: In Sketchy Data, Trying to Gauge Iraq Threat

• September 28, 2003: Agency Belittles Information Given By Iraqi Defectors

• February 1, 2004: Powell's Case a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of Iraq Arms"

• February 7, 2004: Agency Alert About Iraqi Not Heeded, Officials Say

• February 13, 2004: Stung by Exiles's Role, C.I.A. Orders a Shift in Procedures

• March 6, 2004: U.S., Certain That Iraq Had Illicit Arms, Reportedly Ignored Contrary Reports

• January 26, 2004:Ex-Inspector Says C.I.A. Missed Disarray in Iraqi Arms Program

• May 22, 2003: Prewar Views of Iraq Threat Are Under Review by C.I.A.

• Feb. 2, 2003: Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda

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New York Times - THE PUBLIC EDITOR
Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?
By DANIEL OKRENT - May 30, 2004

FROM the moment this office opened for business last December, I felt I could not write about what had been published in the paper before my arrival. Once I stepped into the past, I reasoned, I might never find my way back to the present.

Early this month, though, convinced that my territory includes what doesn't appear in the paper as well as what does, I began to look into a question arising from the past that weighs heavily on the present: Why had The Times failed to revisit its own coverage of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken. On Tuesday, May 18, I told executive editor Bill Keller I would be writing today about The Times's responsibility to address the subject. He told me that an internal examination was already under way; we then proceeded independently and did not discuss it further. The results of The Times's own examination appeared in last Wednesday's paper, and can be found online at nytimes.com/critique

I think they got it right. Mostly. (I do question the placement: as one reader asked, "Will your column this Sunday address why the NYT buried its editors' note - full of apologies for burying stories on A10 - on A10?")

Some of The Times's coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles by David Johnston, James Risen and others that provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby. Especially notable among these was Risen's "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," which was completed several days before the invasion and unaccountably held for a week. It didn't appear until three days after the war's start, and even then was interred on Page B10.

The Times's flawed journalism continued in the weeks after the war began, when writers might have broken free from the cloaked government sources who had insinuated themselves and their agendas into the prewar coverage. I use "journalism" rather than "reporting" because reporters do not put stories into the newspaper. Editors make assignments, accept articles for publication, pass them through various editing hands, place them on a schedule, determine where they will appear. Editors are also obliged to assign follow-up pieces when the facts remain mired in partisan quicksand.

The apparent flimsiness of "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert," by Judith Miller (April 21, 2003), was no less noticeable than its prominent front-page display; the ensuing sequence of articles on the same subject, when Miller was embedded with a military unit searching for W.M.D., constituted an ongoing minuet of startling assertion followed by understated contradiction. But pinning this on Miller alone is both inaccurate and unfair: in one story on May 4, editors placed the headline "U.S. Experts Find Radioactive Material in Iraq" over a Miller piece even though she wrote, right at the top, that the discovery was very unlikely to be related to weaponry.

The failure was not individual, but institutional.

When I say the editors got it "mostly" right in their note this week, the qualifier arises from their inadequate explanation of the journalistic imperatives and practices that led The Times down this unfortunate path. There were several.

THE HUNGER FOR SCOOPS Even in the quietest of times, newspaper people live to be first. When a story as momentous as this one comes into view, when caution and doubt could not be more necessary, they can instead be drowned in a flood of adrenalin. One old Times hand recently told me there was a period in the not-too-distant past when editors stressed the maxim "Don't get it first, get it right." That soon mutated into "Get it first and get it right." The next devolution was an obvious one.

War requires an extra standard of care, not a lesser one. But in The Times's W.M.D. coverage, readers encountered some rather breathless stories built on unsubstantiated "revelations" that, in many instances, were the anonymity-cloaked assertions of people with vested interests. Times reporters broke many stories before and after the war - but when the stories themselves later broke apart, in many instances Times readers never found out. Some remain scoops to this day. This is not a compliment.

FRONT-PAGE SYNDROME There are few things more maligned in newsroom culture than the "on the one hand, on the other hand" story, with its exquisitely delicate (and often soporific) balancing. There are few things more greedily desired than a byline on Page 1. You can "write it onto 1," as the newsroom maxim has it, by imbuing your story with the sound of trumpets. Whispering is for wimps, and shouting is for the tabloids, but a terrifying assertion that may be the tactical disinformation of a self-interested source does the trick.

"Intelligence Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraq Qaeda Cell," by Patrick E. Tyler (Feb. 6, 2003) all but declared a direct link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein - a link still to be conclusively established, more than 15 months later. Other stories pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors.

HIT-AND-RUN JOURNALISM The more surprising the story, the more often it must be revisited. If a defector like Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri is hailed by intelligence officials for providing "some of the most valuable information" about chemical and biological laboratories in Iraq ("Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say," by Judith Miller, Jan. 24, 2003), unfolding events should have compelled the paper to re-examine those assertions, and hold the officials publicly responsible if they did not pan out.

In that same story anonymous officials expressed fears that Haideri's relatives in Iraq "were executed as a message to potential defectors."

Were they? Did anyone go back to ask? Did anything Haideri say have genuine value? Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers.

CODDLING SOURCES There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, "We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it," may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.

The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised. Reporters must be willing to help reveal a source's misdeeds; information does not earn immunity. To a degree, Chalabi's fall from grace was handled by The Times as if flipping a switch; proper coverage would have been more like a thermostat, constantly taking readings and then adjusting to the surrounding reality. (While I'm on the subject: Readers were never told that Chalabi's niece was hired in January 2003 to work in The Times's Kuwait bureau. She remained there until May of that year.)

END-RUN EDITING Howell Raines, who was executive editor of the paper at the time, denies that The Times's standard procedures were cast aside in the weeks before and after the war began. (Raines's statement on the subject, made to The Los Angeles Times, may be read at poynter.org/forum/?id=misc#raines.)

But my own reporting (I have spoken to nearly two dozen current and former Times staff members whose work touched on W.M.D. coverage) has convinced me that a dysfunctional system enabled some reporters operating out of Washington and Baghdad to work outside the lines of customary bureau management.

In some instances, reporters who raised substantive questions about certain stories were not heeded. Worse, some with substantial knowledge of the subject at hand seem not to have been given the chance to express reservations. It is axiomatic in newsrooms that any given reporter's story, tacked up on a dartboard, can be pierced by challenges from any number of colleagues. But a commitment to scrutiny is a cardinal virtue. When a particular story is consciously shielded from such challenges, it suggests that it contains something that plausibly should be challenged.

Readers have asked why The Times waited so long to address the issues raised in Wednesday's statement from the editors. I suspect that Keller and his key associates may have been reluctant to open new wounds when scabs were still raw on old ones, but I think their reticence made matters worse. It allowed critics to form a powerful chorus; it subjected staff members under criticism (including Miller) to unsubstantiated rumor and specious charges; it kept some of the staff off balance and distracted.

The editors' note to readers will have served its apparent function only if it launches a new round of examination and investigation. I don't mean further acts of contrition or garment-rending, but a series of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal.

No one can deny that this was a drama in which The Times played a role. On Friday, May 21, a front-page article by David E. Sanger ("A Seat of Honor Lost to Open Political Warfare") elegantly characterized Chalabi as "a man who, in lunches with politicians, secret sessions with intelligence chiefs and frequent conversations with reporters from Foggy Bottom to London's Mayfair, worked furiously to plot Mr. Hussein's fall." The words "from The Times, among other publications" would have fit nicely after "reporters" in that sentence. The aggressive journalism that I long for, and that the paper owes both its readers and its own self-respect, would reveal not just the tactics of those who promoted the W.M.D. stories, but how The Times itself was used to further their cunning campaign.

In 1920, Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz wrote that The Times had missed the real story of the Bolshevik Revolution because its writers and editors "were nervously excited by exciting events." That could have been said about The Times and the war in Iraq. The excitement's over; now the work begins.

The public editor is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.

Vatican endorses child rape

Letter to the Editor

I've always believed that it's not what you say that matters - it's what you do. Although the Catholic Church claims to be against priests raping children their actions tell a different tale. Archbishop Bernard Law who covered up the raping of children by priests in Boston has now been transfered to the Vatican. This sends a message that the Catholic Church is more interested in protecting the careers of the clergy that protecting Catholic children from being raped by priests.

Although the Church gives lip service saying that priests should not have sex with children - what they are doing speaks louder than what they are saying. So when the church says that some politicians aren't fit to take communion because of their stance on abortion - I say that the Catholic Church isn't fit to give communion based on their stance on allowing priests to have sex with children. Any religion that allows child rape has no moral authority to take a stand on anything.

If you're looking for a new religion try the Church of Reality - a religion based on believing in everything that's real.

Ashcroft issues fake terror warning.

John Ashcroft's terror warning this last week was fake and no more than a political stunt to attempt to distract attention away from the administrations incompetence. Interestingly enough - it only highlighted the incompetence.

According to MSNBC Ashcroft's sources were know to not be credible. It came from a group that claims responsibility for everything.

John Ashcroft is putting Americans at risk issuing these fake warnings because once people know he's doing that then people are likely to ignore a real warning. John Ashcroft's actions serve the goals of our enemies and not Americans.

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Terror threat source called into question
Ashcroft cites al-Qaida plan, but how credible is the information?
By Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 6:57 p.m. ET May 28, 2004

WASHINGTON - Earlier this week Attorney General John Ashcroft warned of an attack planned on America for sometime in the coming months. That may happen, but NBC News has learned one of Ashcroft’s sources is highly suspect.

In warning Americans to brace for a possible attack, Ashcroft cited what he called “credible intelligence from multiple sources,” saying that “just after New Year's, al-Qaida announced openly that preparations for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete.… After the March 11 attack in Madrid, Spain, an al-Qaida spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete.”

But terrorism experts tell NBC News there's no evidence a credible al-Qaida spokesman ever said that, and the claims actually were made by a largely discredited group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, known for putting propaganda on the Internet.

“This particular group is not really taken seriously by Western intelligence,” said terrorism expert M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, an international policy assessment group. “It does not appear to have any real field operational capability. But it is certainly part of the global jihad movement — part of its propaganda wing, if you like. It likes to weave a web of lies; it likes to put out disinformation so that the truth is deeply buried. So it is a dangerous group in that sense, but it is not taken seriously in terms of its operational capability.”

The group has claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London and the Madrid bombing. None of the claims was found to be credible.

Bush's Uncle Caught Laundering Money to Terrorists

Fed Orders Riggs Bank Over Laundering

Fri May 14, 5:12 PM ET

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve (news - web sites) ordered Riggs Bank's parent company Friday to take steps to prevent money laundering after the bank was fined $25 million in connection with a probe into possible links to terrorism financing.

The action came a day after Treasury Department (news - web sites) regulators levied the record-setting fine against Riggs for its handling of millions of dollars in foreign-held accounts.

In a cease-and-desist order issued by the central bank, Riggs will have to take actions such as hiring an independent consultant to conduct a review. Its operation in Miami — which Riggs plans to close — will be required to retain an outside consultant to review previous account transactions for suspicious activity.

The Federal Reserve has jurisdiction over bank holding companies. The Atlanta Fed had previously advised Riggs's Miami-based subsidiary of deficiencies in its compliance with laws to prevent money laundering, the order noted.

Riggs is a midsize Washington bank with a near-exclusive franchise on business with the capital's diplomatic community.

Credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's said that the fine, combined with anticipated restructuring charges of $15 million to $21 million in the April-June quarter, "should result in a large loss in the second quarter and prevent Riggs from being profitable for the year."

Standard & Poor's and other agencies have recently downgraded their ratings of Riggs, reflecting what S&P on Friday called "continued profitability pressures and regulatory uncertainty."

Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued the fine in an order made public late Thursday, after weeks of negotiations between Riggs officials and banking regulators.

----------------------------

And the CEO is ...

Dudley Elected Chairman of Riggs Investment Management Subsidiary; Bush to Serve as President & CEO

Washington, D.C., May 31, 2000 - Riggs Bank N.A. today announced that the Board of Directors of RIMCO, a wholly owned investment management subsidiary, has elected Jonathan J. Bush President & Chief Executive Officer and a Director, replacing Philip Tasho who resigned. In addition, Henry A. Dudley, Jr. was elected Chairman.

Mr. Bush will continue as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of J. Bush & Co., an investment management company he founded in 1970, which Riggs acquired in 1997. Mr. Dudley, a 24-year veteran of Riggs, will continue to be responsible for all of Riggs Bank's investment management, trust and private banking business.

Located in the nation's capital, Riggs Bank has 53 branches in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, as well as banking offices in Miami, London and Berlin.

----------------------

Jonathan J. Bush (Jonathan James Bush) (1931- ) is an uncle to President George Walker Bush.

A Wall Street financier, Jonathan Bush pulled together two dozen investors to raise $3 million to help launch Arbusto. Among the investors was Dorothy Bush, George W.’s grandmother. At the same time, Jonathan Bush was lining up investors for Arbusto, he also was raising money for George H.W. Bush’s presidential explorations. Many of the funders were the same.

Bush is a Trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

More on Democratic Underground

Tearing Down Abu Ghraib Prison

Letter to the Editor

Bush wants to waste taxpayers money by tearing down Abu Ghraib Prison because of the US torture scandal and build a new prison at our expense. I find it amazing that Bush thinks that rape, torture, and murder problem can be solved by tearing down a building. If that kind of reasoning made sense them maybe we should tear down the Whitehouse to solve the national debt.

Tough choices for Republicans

Letter to the Editor

Republicans are facing tough choices this election year. More pictures and videos are surfacing that document atrocities at prisons in Iraq. We are seeing rape, sodomy, torture, and the murdering of prisoners in US custody. It is now believed that the orders to commit these war crimes came directly from the White House.

So what do Republicans do? Do they stick with the President and try to downplay these extremely graphic pictures? Or do they put the interests of Americans first and get to the bottom of this? Will Republicans like John McCain do what's right - or will he sell out to election year politics? Time for McCain to put his money where his mouth is. I challenge McCain's honesty.

Berg Video - SMOKING GUN?

OK - we may have the smoking gun in the Berg video that proves the Nick Berg was killed by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison. In addition to all the other evidence that I posted on my blog, I have been seeing some messages that if proved to be so answers the question as to who really killed Berg.

There has been a semi-secret government initiative to add digital signatures to various digital consumer products. Photocopiers and digital cameras store an encrypted signature to identify the unit that made the video. This digitial signature is totally inique to each device and is more unique than a fingerprint.

Today new pictures were released of prison torture at Abu Ghraib prison. But not just still pictures. Today video was released showing prisoners being tortured by Americans. Aparently Kodak film experts are Kodak Park in Rochester New York have compared the digital watermarks of the turture video and the beheading video and have determined that one of the cameras used in the Nick Berg beheading is THE SAME CAMERA that took the prison torture video.

If this turns out to be true then there is NO DOUBT that Berg was killed by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison.

I urge all of you to press to find out if this story is actually true, and if so - HOLY SHIT !!!

Yahoo Message

Arabs aren't buying Berg Execution

http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=2785

It would appear that I am not the only one wearing a tin foil hat. A lot of other people are raising the same questions I've been raising about the Nick Berg beheading. This article doesn't go as for as I did to conclude Americans did it - but they take you right up to the edge of that conclusion.

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The video of execution of American hostage Nick Berg in Iraq is threatening to develop into a major scandal. During a press conference the father of the beheaded American accused Bush and Rumsfeld of killing his son. There are more and more suspicions that Nick Berg was really executed not by Arab militants, but by the US intelligence services in order to divert the attention from the scandal about the tortures in Baghdad prison.

First there was a report that a video showing an execution of an American expert captured in Iraq was shown on a so-called 'Islamic extremist' website. It was reported that the execution was carried out by a group of guerillas tied to Al-Qaeda in order to take revenge for the tortures that the American soldiers did to Iraqi inmates.

The video shows five men, whose faces are hidden behind black masks and traditional Arab scarves. They all are standing around a tied-up man with an orange suit on, the kind of suit inmates wear. The victim says to the camera: «My name is Nick Berg, my father’s name is Michael, my mother’s name is Susan. I have a brother and a sister, David and Sarah. I live in Philadelphia».

After these words they got him down on the floor, put a big knife to his throat and cut his head off, while screaming 'Allah Akbar' ('God is Great'). The video footage was called «Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American». A day before the video was shown, Mr. Berg’s parents were told that their son’s body was found near a highway in Baghdad. The scene of the execution and the comments on it were the number one news in the world’s mass media for some time.

Then the CIA experts released a statement saying that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the man in mask who beheaded the US citizen Nick Berg in front of a camera. Then Western commentators and moralists took over and launched a campaign to vindicate the Americans exposed for torturing Iraqi inmates.

Compared to the brutal murder of an American with cutting his head off, the tortures of Iraqis in prisons started looking like minor pranks of undisciplined soldiers. Another factor was that the beheaded victim was a Jew, which was picked up by the Zionists immediately to justify their actions and to show what kind of enemy they have to be dealing with.

However, so many questions arose about the videotape that all accusers of so-called 'Islamists' got quiet right away and the subject disappeared from the agenda in the world’s media.

Many questions came up, and they are all pointing out that the accusations by Mr. Berg’s father against the US authorities on killing his son have very serious grounds.

The first suspicion was caused by a video where Berg was wearing an orange American jail suit. Berg was arrested by the Americans and had time to tell his friend that he was in an American prison. Intelligence services were denying this and were saying that Berg was arrested by the Iraqi police for Israeli stamps in his passport. But later on it turned out that he was questioned by Americans, and FBI agents came to his parents’ house to find out whether he was involved in any terrorist activities.

Berg’s e-mail showed that he was held in custody by the Americans. Turned out that an American was held in an American prison and beheaded right after he was presumably released.

In this connection there is a question whether the American was released from prison at all. If he was, and if he was late for his flight because of the arrest, as his parents first claimed, then why he ended up being captured by 'terrorists' and dressed in an American jail suit? How would militants even get a suit like this in the first place, and why would they make their hostage put it on?

The experts who saw the video say that the man posing as Jordanian native Zarqawi does not speak the Jordanian dialect. Zarqawi has an artificial leg, but none of these murderers did. The man presented as Zarqawi had a yellow ring, presumably a golden one, which Muslim men are banned from wearing, especially so-called fundamentalists.

The experts mentioned that the man calls Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) 'Gracious Prophet', while it is only Allah, Whom Muslims call 'Gracious'.

More and more questions are coming up about Mr. Berg’s murder and some of them have already been presented to the country’s leadership by the American public.

But major American mass media, which support the war in Iraq, are ignoring this information.

Infowars.com published the material titled «This is a 98 % secret US operation». The chair that Nick Berg was sitting on before the execution was the same as the chairs in Abu-Ghraib prison, where tortures were being committed. These chairs were brought by the US army. It was also reported that even though Nick Berg was a civilian, for some reason his body was delivered to a US Air Force base in Dover, where the dead servicemen are brought.

Meanwhile more and more new circumstances are being revealed when the video is being studied. The doctors are saying that there is almost no blood shown during the beheading, while normally a lot of blood would have been gushing if the person were alive. No blood was seen around it or on the hands of the one who cut the head off. Then it must have been a dead person who was beheaded.

All militants filmed on the video footage are too fat for the Iraqi standards, especially for militants, and they all had white palms of their hands. When the video was studied it turned out that the scream shown in this footage was recorded earlier and it was probably a woman’s scream.

The weapons that the murderers were holding in their hands resemble AKs, but the experts claim that this is a modified AK-47, Israeli-made Halil.

All Islamic organizations, including the ones accused of terrorism, have condemned this act. Nothing has been heard about Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi for the past few months, and there has been a rumor going on that he died in a bombing.

If he did take part in beheading the American and wanted to make it known this way (even the video was called «Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American»), then why did he need to put a mask on or close his face with a scarf?

But if he has nothing to do with it, and somebody decided to use his name, then it would be quite natural to expect Zarqawi to deny the allegations about his involvement in Mr. Berg’s execution. But no denials have been heard. Especially when such a denial would have been appropriate after all Islamic organizations and the Iraqis condemned this murder.

This fact means that Zarqawi may not be alive. Those who put on that show knew that Zarqawi could no longer deny whatever they accuse him of.

Will the US government be able to deny what Mr. Berg’s parents and the public are accusing it of? Probably, the experts, who manage to find Arab passports and the Holy Koran under a tumbled-down and melted skyscraper, will make something up this time as well? If they don’t, they you should expect some new movies and new terrorist acts to be made by the joint effort of Hollywood and the CIA.

White House Authorized Torture

Why did the tortue occur? Because Bush and Rumsfield ordered it - stating:

The United States recognizes that the Geneva Conventions outlawing prisoner abuse apply to the war in Iraq. But it has said al Qaeda "terrorism" suspects do not qualify as prisoners of war under the terms of the treaty.

Newsweek on Sunday disclosed a memorandum by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales written in Jan. 25, 2002, that said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war."

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," he said.

Does Torture Work?

We are hearing a lot of doublespeak about whether or not torture works. The media has trotted out many "experts" that claim that torture doesn't work. Millitary people who denounce the turtore as the Abu Ghraib prison keep saying - torture doesn't work.

On the other hand they are making the opposite argument that "torture is necessary" in order to get information to save lives. They still want to be able to use torture stating that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to everyone. They create classifications of people who they can torture. They also ship certian prisoners to countries who haven't signed the Geneva Convention so they can be tortured for us.

So - if torture doesn't wwork - then why does the Bush administration continue to pursue it.

It's the same sort of doublespeak about does America torture people or not. "Of course we don't torture people! We are civilised Americans - not barbarians!" But on the other hand American have black ops programs that do things we don't want to think about so that the government can pretend that they don't do the things they are really doing. And this is supposed to be a lie that we are all supposed to accept and believe.

It's the same chair !!!! OMFG !!

Here's where you really need the tin foil hat. Look at this pic that was released today of the latest prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Notice the white chair in the lower left corner. Now - look at the chair Nicholas Berg is sitting in!! It's the same fucking chair!!

I have some more pics but the walls are the same yellow color and the baseboard is the same color as Abu Ghraib prison. Then - as I've said before - what is Nicholas Berg doing in an orange prison jump suit? The orange jump suit is the same color as the ones used at the prison!!! Terrorists don't put the people they kidnap in orange prison jump suits!

Now - put that together with the fact that these "terrorists" are WHITE and FAT and they are wearing BULLET PROOF VESTS!! So who goes around wearing bullet proof vests all the time? People like CIA - Prison guards!

This is enough to scare the shit out of you but - Nicholas Berg was murdered by AMERICANS at Abu Ghraib prison. They staged it so as to make it look like terrorists murdered Berg.

If you have a different opinion then you tell me why they have the same plastic furniture - the same walls - the same floorboard color - and the same orange jump suit. You tell me why these terrorists are fat white guys wearing bullet proof vests. You tell me why they speak bad Arabic. You tell me why they yell like Americans when they kill Berg. I suppose the terrorist picked up those chairs at the local WalMart!

There is a dispute as to if Berg was in US custody. He was arrested by Iraqi police but they claim they turned him over to American custody. America however denies that they had him.

CNN said initially that they were sure the voice was NOT al-Zarqawi. The CIA however confirms that it is. Isn't that amazing! I listen to the voices and it doesn't sound like the voices of someone who speaks Arabic as their first language.

But you see - it's not about the voices that make you think it's not al-Zarqawi. In May 2002 Zarqawi traveled to Iraq. He had his leg amputated and had a prosthetic limb to replace it. So - for a guy with ONE LEG al-Zarqawi is VERY NIMBLE on his feet! So - make you wonder how well the CIA thought things through when they decided to play terrorist?

This is what a REAL terrorists look like. This is the picture of Daniel Pearl who was also killed by terrorists. Notice the thin brown hands - the grabbing of the hair - and the gun to the head. The guy is mean - angry. Pearl has on ordinary clothes and his hands are chained. When you look at the picture you can feel the wildness of a true terrorist. You can tell Pearl looks like he knows he is in big trouble. The clothes on the terrorists look normal for the region - but on the photos of the Berg terrorists - they look like they are in a costume.

Now look at the Berg terrorists. These guys look like the 5 stooges! They are FAT and WHITE. Check out the guy on the right. Do I see WHITE SHOES? Wonder how he keeps them clean running around the Iraqi desert?

When he reads the statement - does he sound angry? I don't hear it. He's reading a script.

As to can see on terrorists 2, 4, and 5 - the BULLET PROOF VESTS. American MPs wear them all the time. To them it's like putting on their underwear. hey wear them so that if a prisoner tries to make a knife and stab them in the heart - they are protected. I guess they never thought they would show up under the terrorist costume.

Berg has no idea what it about to happen. He looks comfortable - perhaps to comfortable. I think they probably told him that they wanted him to pretend to be a hostage in order to get out of prison. Berg knew he was back at Abu Ghraib prison and that his "captors" were Americans - and that he was playing a role. Notice the orange prison garb in the picture.

The beheading changed the mood of the nation. Several lawmakers commented that after the beheading that it reminded them what the real issues were. So the beheading had the intended effect - that is - to inflame Americans and get them to think that torture is something that can be acceptable.

What we are seeing here people scares me beyond belief. I sit here stunned. I want to call someone but don't know who to call. If this turns out to be true - the world will experience a moment of horror unlike anything the world has ever experienced - except maybe the nuking of Japan.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: What I've posted here isn't an absolute conclusion but asks a lot of questions that need to be answered. I need you to get everyone possible to link to this web page - or - copy it and post it on other sites. I need you to call your members in the US House and Senate. I need you to call your local radio and TV stations and get them to look at this.

Even though exposing this is bad for America - what is really bad for America is if we do this and get away with it. We can not allow America to become like NAZIs. The integrity of who we are and what we believe in must be preserved. We are a people of TRUTH and the only thing that's important is to find out WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE.

More strange stuff:
The link below is a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary called Convoy of Death documenting the slaughter of 3000 Afgan POWs in December of 2001.
Afgan POWs Killed - 55mb Quicktime Format

A Message from the Management:
If you are a loyal patriotic American who believe in American values and you find this article to be offensive then Click Here to complain about it.

I've closed the comments on this. There are already too many comments and just about everything that can be said has been said dozens of times.

Addressing other issues and comments

A lot of you have left comments about what I wrote that should be addressed. There are many who agree - many who disagree - and many who are confounded. Some people have posted other reasons to support or not support my assessment. I'm not going to address everything - but try to hit the main points.

First - I tried to stick with what I though was the most solid questions abut the beheading. There are other less solid ones - but I wanted to be focused.

Then - one of my goals is to raise these questions so that they get answered. There may be a reason that the terrorists dressed Berg in the same garb used in the prison. There may be reasons for everything I raised. I want to hear those things explained. I want to hear the questions asked - if nothing else - but to give satisfaction to those who disagree with me to gloat. Let's ask the questions and get the answers.

Yes - every single item taken by itself can be explained as an amazing coincidence. But when you out it all together - it crosses the line into something else. It's like if you tell me you once won the state lottery I'd say - wow - you must be very lucky. But then you tell me you won the lottery twice and I say - "er - really?" Then you say - I won the lottery 5 times in a row ..... Now you're lying - even though each single instance is barely believable.

In this case we have the same situation. The prison garb - maybe. The chair - maybe. The two legs instead of one - maybe. They were all white and fat - maybe. But - put it all together - I'm not buying it.

Furthermore - for those of you who haven't made the leap to the conclusion I came to - that Americans dressed as terrorists did it - you at least have to admit that serious questions are raised that need to be answered. And I'm hoping you all will help me get the questions asked.

• No Blood - I only watched it once but it was a blur to me. There may be a reason that there is blood (has to be blood) but we don't see it. The reality is - Berg really is dead - and his head really was cut off. So - whatever doesn't make sense about the blood is just generally confusing.

• The Gold Ring I'm told this is against Islamic law. And - that contributes to the argument. I personally don't find it persuasive by itself, but it contributes a little.

• The Tape was Edited - Yes - there are wo time lines on the tape. What does that mean? Does it mean it was faked? Again - Nick Berg is really dead. So - I believe he was actually killed by the guys on the tape. But - what it does indicate is that the terrorists have what seems to be two cameras and digitial video editing equipment. Other tapes from bin Laden are not as high tech. Generally a physical copy is delivered to a TV station rather than a two camera production that is digitally edited and uploaded to a web site.

• Why cover his face and then give his name? - Yes - this is a good point. That is what you would do if you weren't who you say you are. And it's one of those add on reasons that supports my conclusion.

• Political Timing and Motives - I've avoided this because I don't want to get distracted by a political debate. That debate is there - but I'm trying to focus on the facts that are not in dispute. I draw my information from the published pictures. Motive do need to be considered - but I'm not going there in this article.

• The CIA couldn't be that stupid - Yes - they can. This murder looks like the kind of short term bad thinking that the Bush administration is known for. The prison sex abuse pics we are seeing shows that - yes - they really can be that stupid.

• Orange Prison Garb - This is what I consider the strongest red flag that he was at the prison. Americans put prosiners in orange so that if they escape they are easier to spot. The last thing a kidnapper is going to do is put a hostage in orange. Orange is what you put on people who you want to attract attention to.

  Berg was in custody of the US. Something the US is still lying about. So - when he was released do you think they are going to send him out on the streets of Iraq wearing orange? Not hardly! Orange means pick this guy up and bring him back to prison. They would have taken the prison garb away and gave him his clothes back.

  Even if for some reason he got out with prison grab on - the first thing he would have done is get regular clothes. You just would not walk around Iraq wearing orange.

  So - then if he's abducted again by terrorists - and lets say that they somehow had clothing just like the prison garb - are they going to put him in it? Not hardly. If you are a terrorist kidnapper the last thing you want to do is draw attention your way. So - orange prison outfit - no way!

  
  

Is the voice that of al-Zarqawi?

According to CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/12/iraq.berg/index.html

"The voice on the tape could not be verified as that of al-Zarqawi. CNN staff members familiar with al-Zarqawi's voice said the voice on the tape did not sound like him."

However - many in the news media and US generals are still stating that the executioner is al-Zarqawi. It would seem that those who are perpatrating this fraud wants very much to link it to al-Zarqawi.

"U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the person shown on a video beheading an American civilian in Iraq, based on an analysis of the voice on the video, a CIA official said Thursday."

Rape and Torture is Wrong!

Letter to the Editor

The Pentagon showed lawmakers the remaining photos of prisoner abuse. These new photos are so graphic that senators concluded that releasing the photos would put our troops in danger. They stated that even to fully describe everything would offend the sensibilities of any rational person.

Of what they could describe they stated that saw the raping of prisoners - both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Other pictures depicted "crewel and sadistic torture" and obscenities with corpses. "I don't know how the hell these people got into our army," said Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell after viewing what he called a fraction of the images. We can only imaging what they can't describe.

I want to say for the record that rape and torture is wrong and that there is absolutely no way to justify this. We can not ignore this and try to cover it up. We need to get to the bottom of this no matter how high up the ladder this goes. This is about who we are as a country and we can not allow ourselves to be defined this way. The absolute worse thing that can happen is that we allow people to get away with this. We need to make it absolutely clear to the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Military, and the people of the world that it is never ok to do this and those who are doing this will be punished. America will be judged by our integrity and we must show the world that we are an honest people and can be trusted.

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PS: OK - tin foil hats on.

I look at the beheading and I see that the terrorists are WHITE and FAT. They are wearing BULLET PROOF VESTS and the guy on the right has WHITE SHOES.

The prisoner is wearing an ORANGE JUMPSUIT that is the same color and style used in the American run prison. The Arabic is bad and CNN has determined that it is not the guy who the web site says it is.

You look at the pictures and you tell me what you see. When you play "what's wrong with this picture" - it scares the hell out of you.

Freepers List Berg as Anti-war Activist

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1092851/posts

This is amazing!!! Several disturbing things. This Michael Berg is the father of guy beheaded. Nick Berg was arrested by US FORCES. Father filed suit against US for sons arreast and was anti-war.

Local news piece:

http://kyw.com/Local%20News/local_story_128173423.html

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/8621773.htm

WEST CHESTER, Pa. - Nick Berg was on his way out of Iraq. He had been released from the prison where he had been held for 13 days by Iraqi police for reasons he said he did not know. He had made his way from Mosul to his Baghdad hotel. He was finished with being an independent civilian contractor and was coming home to West Chester.

That was April 9. A month later, Berg's parents, Michael and Suzanne, still haven't heard from him. They've gone from concerned to frantic.

"Our hopes are that he's still in hiding or en route and traveling in a very slow manner," Michael Berg said.

A spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq who tracks the number of civilians missing in that country was unavailable for comment. But in mid-April, coalition spokesman Dan Senor said during a news briefing in Baghdad that about 40 people from 12 countries were missing and presumed hostages.

Nick Berg, 26, owns a business called Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. He climbs communications towers to inspect the antennas, the electrical connections and the structure. He first went to Iraq on Dec. 21.

He stayed until Feb. 1, making contact with a company that indicated there would likely be work for him later. But he returned on March 14 and there was no work, so he began traveling. He usually called home once a day and e-mailed several times; Michael Berg is his business manager, and they needed to stay in touch.

They spoke on March 24, and Nick Berg told his parents he was coming home on March 30. Then the communications stopped, and he wasn't on the plane on March 30.

When FBI agents arrived at the Berg's West Chester home on March 31, they were relieved to know their son was alive, but in jail. The agents questioned them about various details that only they and their son would know about.

Jerri Williams, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia FBI office, said the agency was "asked to interview the parents regarding Mr. Berg's purpose in Iraq."

On April 5, the Bergs filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending that their son was being held illegally by the U.S. military in Iraq.

The next day, April 6, Nick Berg was released. He told his parents he had been riding in a taxi on March 24 when he was arrested by Iraqi officials at a checkpoint in Mosul. He told his parents he had not been mistreated.

Nick Berg said he would come home through Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait. But by then, hostilities in Iraq had escalated, and Michael Berg said they have not heard from their son since.

The Bergs have hounded the State Department, the FBI and the International Committee of the Red Cross, seeking information. Michael Berg said the State Department sent an official to Nick Berg's hotel, where an employee told the official they had not heard of him.

The Bergs hired a private investigator, who talked to an American hotel guest who said he remembered Nick Berg.

Sometimes, they tell themselves their son "is a resourceful fellow who can take care of himself," Michael Berg said.

"Other times we think perhaps he was dead on April 10," he said. "My worst fear is that I'll never hear anything."

American Beheaded

An American was beheaded today in retaliation for Bush's failed policy of torturing prisoners. I cal it Bush's policy because as soon as 9-11 happened Bush started talking about when torture can be used and tried to distinguish various of war so as to justify torture. Then Bush had secret prisons set up like the one in Cuba so as to keep away anyone who would supervise them. So - when torture is exposed - are we really surprised?

Getting back on subject - seeing the pictures of the video supposedly of terrorists executing an American - the terrorists seem to be taller - stockier - and fatter that most Islamist terrorists are. It looks to me like these could be Americans posing as Islamic terrorists to create an event to justify our use of torture.

Furthermore - if you look at the video you can see that Nick Berg is wearing an orange prison jump suit. When you look at the Iraqi POW abuse pictures one of them - the one with prisoners tied and laying on the floor - shows the same type of orange prison jumpsuit. The man is executed in a concrete building with yellow walls and floresent lighting - the same yellow walls and lighting as the abuse pictures. Am I crazy? Or - was this man executed at Abu Ghraib prison.

Also - these guys are wearing bullet proof jackets. That's very American. And - when they yelled before they cut the head off - they sounded like Americans yelling at a football game.

According to CNN the voices don't match al-Zarqawi. From CNN:

The Web site said the killing had been carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of an Islamist terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on coalition forces in Iraq.

The voice on the tape could not be verified as that of al-Zarqawi. CNN staffers familiar with al-Zarqawi's voice said the voice on the tape did not sound like him.

Torture and execution benifit both Osama bin Laden and Bush. The greater the hate the better Bush and the terrorist do. Considering that Americans ordered the execution of survivors of an Afgan Massacure of 3000 POWs it is not outside what Bush would do to cover up this scandal. And - like I said - these terrorists look a little too big and too fat to be Islamist terrorists.

I have seen the video - I was going to post it - but I'm leaning against it. If you get a change to download it and view it - I strongly recommend that you don't. Lets just say that knowing that they guy had his head sawed off with a knike while still alive is enough information to know what happened. I'm still in shock over what I saw and I'm still in a stunned state. Seeing it doesn't add any information to what you already know.

I may post the video because it is what happened. It is the price we pay for having Bush as president. But I'm not ready to do that right now.

Bush Solution to Torture

Letter to the Editor

The Bush solution to the prisoner torture and rape scandal will probably be something like this: "To ensure that America's reputation is never again tarnished by pictures of rape and torture - cameras in prisons are hereby banned."

Bush ordered the Torture

Letter to the Editor

The torture of prisoners in Iraq is not entirely surprising. The Bush administration has been actively advocating the use of torture ever since 9-11. Many statements have been made floating the idea that torture might be used is special circumstances. Prisoners were given new classifications other that Prisoner of War in order to avoid the restrictions of international law. These prisoners were deliberately reclassified into a legally murky area where no rules exists for one and one reason only - so that they could break the rules.

The abuse of prisoners in Iraq was not the acts of a few individuals. It was in fact the real policy of the military and those soldiers were operating on orders from the top.

What the President creates lawless and encourages it and advocates breaking of the rules then it comes as no surprise when the rules are broken. Bush is responsible for the torture of prisoners in Iraq because he is the one who has made it known that the rule of international law does not apply to what America does. I therefore call on the entire Bush administration to take responsibility and step down from power. This is the kind of thing that happens when America allows a president to take power who was never elected in the first place.

SIDE NOTE:

I found yet another site that has the movie of the execution of 3000 Afgan POWs. Apparently the 17 minute movie I send you a link to was edited dowm. This link has a version with more details and is 59 minutes long. It is also in Real format instead of Quicktime.

The video is a Candaian Broadcasting Corporation documentary detailing the execution of 3000 prisoners by suffocation and the survivors shot and buried in mass graves. It's far bigger that the Iraqi story.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm

Call your Congressman

I can see by my log files that it's not just the military who is looking at my video. I see that there are some ".gov" hosts as well that have accesses this movie. The CIA has read it and one hit from the US house of representatives.

At this point I want everyone who reads this to call the house and the senate members to let them know.

http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov

Don't just email. Make a phone call and talk to a person about it.

And - it's time to call for the entire Bush administration to step down.

Who knew what when? The next scandal

Please link to this page and this video

Congress and Bush are complaining that they didn't know - that they were never told until they saw it on the news. They promise that this won't happen again. Well - lets put that to the test.

48 hours ago I posted a video produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that documents a mass murder of 3000 Afgan prisoners in 2001 after the American Telaban was captured. Here is that video:

Afgan POWs Killed - 55mb Quicktime Format

Here's another link:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm

Looking at my log files I can see that out of over 7000 downloads that about 100 of them came from military installations. Specifically from an army base in Fort Leonardwood and the Navy Base in San Deigo, so - the army knows about this. The question is - now that they have seen it - will the military cover this up?

I just had a discussion with my girlfriend about this. She contends that there are honorable people in the military who will do the right thing and make it public and come clean and face the music. I have the opposite opinion that there is in fact not a single honest person in the military and that they will do everything in their power to cover it up and conceal it.

Time will tell which one of us is right. Quite frankly - I hope she is.

So you ask - what good does this do to expose American atrocities? Doesn't that help the enemies of freedom? The short answer is - no - what hurts America is that it happened in the first place. But there's something even worse than that it happened in the first place - that we get away with it.

If this is something that is occurring we can not get away with this because if we get away with it then we will do it again and again. We won't stop doing it until we are seriously busted and pay the price and put systems in place to ensure that we never do this again.

I think about how Hitler started. He committed similar atrocities and he got away with it. The more he got away with the more he committed till they got to the point where it was unstoppable. Now it is us who are starting down that path of torture, rape, and murder.

The reality is - what's happening in Iraq is in part a result of the fact that they got away with a far greater abuse of power in Afghanistan. We stuffed 3000 POWs in trucks and allowed them to suffocate. We left them there in the hot sun for a week. Then we shot the survivors and burred them in a mass grave. And - we got away with it.

Who are we and what are we becoming? Is this who we want to be? I'll answer that - no it is not. So - I say to you in the military who find this web site and see this video and who sit back and do nothing. I say to you - you are fucking cowards - no better than Nazis. I say to you - Fuck you! I have no respect for cowards who sit back with your mouth shut and let it happen. It doesn't take courage to fight and die. Nazis did that just fine. The ones who truly have courage are the ones who stand up for what is right.

There is no difference morally between those soldiers who commit atrocities because they are ordered to and soldiers who lie and cover up atrocities because they are told to. If you see this video and you keep your mouth shut - you are as bad as those who did it. Is there no soldier who has the guts to stand up and say, "This is wrong and I am not going to participate in this!" We know about what happened in Iraq because someone had the courage to do what is obviously the right thing to do. So - I say to the military - who's side are you on? Do you serve the People or do you cover your own sorry butt?

So - are you brave enough to stand up for what is right? Tell me who is going to win the bet - me or my girlfriend?

Are we any better than Saddam?

Letter to the Editor

First America went to war to liberate Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction. That turned out to be a lie. Then it was because Saddam was an oppressive dictator who tortured, raped, and murdered his people. Now it turns out that Americans are now torturing, raping, and murdering the Iraqi people. And Rumsfield has said the pictures we haven't seen include guards sodomizing young boys, female prisoners raped, sadistic torture, and indecent acts with dead bodies. Today the Statue of Liberty is standing on a box with a bag over her head.

3000 Prisoners Slaughtered in Afganastan

If you think that prisoner abuse in Iraq is bad - you haven't seen anything yet. I snagged this video off the Internet about a year ago and I think it's finally time I posted it.

Convoy of Death

There's only one war on our television screens now - that other war, the one from just a year ago, has been forgotten - but not by everyone. In Afghanistan, filmmaker Jamie Doran has uncovered evidence of a massacre: Taliban prisoners of war suffocated in containers, shot in the desert under the watch of American troops.

After screening the videotape last fall, the European Parliament called for an investigation. The United Nations has authorized an official investigation into the film's allegations, but only if the security of its members can be guaranteed. And security is hard to find in northern Afghanistan. Since this documentary was filmed, eyewitnesses have been tortured. Others have disappeared or been killed.

This video is about how the US slaughtered 3000 Afgan prisoners of war. The video is big - 55 megs download and it is shocking. It makes the Black Hole of Calcutta look like a picnic. These prisoners were left in sealed truck containers to suffocate and fry in the hot sun. The few that survived a week were taken out and shot an buried in mass graves.

The video is EXTREMELY disturbing and it will give you nightmares. If you are not ready to see this footage - DO NOT WATCH IT !!! This is NAZI level stuff.

Afgan POWs Killed - 55mb Quicktime Format

Read about the making of this video on Buzzflash:

BuzzFlash Article

Once you've seen this - call your congress critter and let them know about this. The only thing scarier that the fact that this happened is that fact that Bush is covering it up.

http://www.house.gov

Action speak louder than words

Letter to the Editor

We don't know what Bush said at the 9-11 hearing but his actions speak louder than his words. Bush resisted creating the commission, then he resisted testifying before it. When he did testify he insisted on doing it behind closed doors, with Cheney there to guide him, and with no recording device or transcripts allowed.

Obviously Bush isn't very proud of his 9-11 conduct because he's doing everything he can to hide it. The way I see it - if he's hiding it - it's because he knows he has something to hide.