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| BAGHDAD, 27 June 2003 — Iraqis launched a wave of ambushes against
US forces in Iraq and blew up an oil pipeline yesterday. They dropped grenades
from an overpass, blew up a vehicle with a roadside bomb and destroyed
a civilian SUV traveling with US troops. Two US soldiers and two Iraqi
civilians were killed.
Also yesterday, a US military official said two US soldiers and their vehicle had gone missing. The surge in ambushes came despite assurances that the troops are mopping up resistance. A US military official said the intensifying attacks on US and British troops could be a response to almost two weeks of raids targeting Baath Party loyalists. Arab Satellite station Al-Jazeera aired a new statement by a group calling itself “the Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq” that urged Arabs and Muslims to join them in “taking revenge” on America. Arab News |
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| Even as questions stir around the prewar case for ousting Hussein, current challenges in Iraq could test the US public's support for Bush. Christian Science Monitor |
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| The end of the U.S. draft in 1973 and the conversion to an all-volunteer force didn't put an end to conscientious objectors: individuals who, due to deeply held religious, moral or ethical beliefs, resist military service. The end of the draft did, however, force a shift from trying to stay out, to trying to get out. Chicago Tribune (reg/req) and Hyde Park Media |
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| Decent pay, flexible hours, good benefits package - but being Saudi Arabia's state executioner does have its down side - UK Guardian |
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| Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the (US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz) said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." UK Guardian |
| "Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations are likely to grow over the next few years, despite international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, says a United Nations report." BBC |
| "Peaceful demonstrators shot and beaten. Students expelled for wearing T-shirts opposing the president. A Girl Scout threatened with arrest for silently protesting the war on a street corner. Protesters plucked from the sidewalk ahead of a presidential motorcade and forced into a “protest pit” a third of a mile away. A teacher fired for posting student art a principal deemed “not sufficiently pro-war.” These are dangerous times in America. But a new report by the ACLU outlining the widespread assault on civil liberties since September 11, 2001, by federal, state and local authorities also provides stirring evidence of growing grass-roots resistance to these attacks." In These Times |
| Powell was Under Pressure to Use Shaky Intelligence on Iraq: Report Agence France Presse |
| New evidence suggests that a war crime may have taken place in Baghdad
on April 8. That morning, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukraine-born cameraman employed
by Reuters, was standing on the 15th-floor balcony of the Palestine Hotel.
José Couso, an employee of the Spanish news company Telcinco, was
filming from a balcony one floor below. Suddenly a U.S. tank less than
a mile away fired a single round at the hotel, hitting the 15th-floor balcony.
Protsyuk was found lying on his back, unconscious. Couso was hit by debris.
Both died soon afterward.
Now, Couso's relatives have asked a judge to extradite three U.S. military officers to Spain, where the officers stand accused of war crimes and excessive force against civilians. The Pentagon has consistently justified these killings as self-defense, because U.S. troops were allegedly being fired on by someone in the vicinity of the hotel. But according to an investigation by the Committee to Protect Journalists, "There is simply no evidence to support the . . . position that U.S. forces were returning hostile fire from the Palestine Hotel. It conflicts with eyewitness testimonies of numerous journalists in the hotel." From the Village Voice |
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| "Hollywood writers and producers said yesterday's decision by the Federal Communications Commission to relax media ownership rules would damage the quality and creativity of network television by concentrating program development into fewer and fewer hands." NYT(reg/reg) |
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| "The Bush administration is learning that it will take more troops to police and secure Iraq than it did to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "The Bush administration reportedly buried a report commissioned by the US Treasury which predicted a budget deficit of over $44,000bn and called for tax rises." BBC |
| Military analysts say there is danger in dismissing the recent Iraqi attacks as random. Christian Science Monitor |
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| Public confidence in the media, already low, continues to slip. Only 36%, among the lowest in years, believe news organizations get the facts straight, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. |
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| Research on low-yield nuclear weapons underscores US shift from a strategy of deterrence to one of preemption. Christian Science Monitor |
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| Asked about The Beatles' hit "Back in the USSR", McCartney said he
did not know a lot about the former Soviet Union when he co-wrote the song
with John Lennon.
"It was always a mystical land," he told reporters. "It's nice to see the reality. I always suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that's true." BBC |
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| "Humiliating people on TV is considered sport -- and people volunteer to be humiliated." USA Today |
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| Awe at American power in war has been transformed into anger at American impotence in peace. NYT(reg/req) |
| "Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived." BBC |
| The Christian Science Monitor finds high levels of radiation left by US armor-piercing shells. |
| "The ice shell of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is probably about 25 kilometres (15 miles) thick, according to scientists...Beneath this crust there is probably an ocean of water kept liquid by heat from Europa's interior, and protected by the ice shield for tens of millions of years at least. Many scientists believe that these conditions are right for life to begin..." BBC |
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| The city's morgue has seen a 60 percent rise in gunshot killings over the past 10 days. Chrtistian Science Monitor |
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| "Nearly a month after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, the reconstruction effort is struggling to gain visibility and credibility, crime is a continuing problem, Iraqis desperate for jobs and security are becoming angry and the transition to democracy promised by President Bush seems rife with risk." LA Times |
| U.S. troops exchanged fire with Iraqis at least seven times over the
past weekend, with one American soldier being shot in Baghdad May 4.
A 3rd Infantry Division soldier was shot in the back of the head by an Iraqi civilian in a city intersection, a U.S. Central Command release stated today. "Two Marines provided first aid, and the soldier was evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, where he is in stable condition," the release stated. Defense Department officials have not released the soldier's name. In Hillah, off-duty Iraqi policemen fired on American Marines when the Marines caught them attempting to steal a civilian vehicle. One Iraqi policeman was killed and another wounded in the ensuing firefight, CENTCOM officials said. American Forces Press Service |
| "A soaring number of U.S. children are overweight, but many of their mothers don't know it: about a third of those with heavy children think their kids are at a normal weight, shows a federal survey out" today. USA Today |
| "Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is set to move in front of the star as viewed from Earth on Wednesday, 7 May." BBC |
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| Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein: Staying in power required a certain amount of sanity, as well as a narcissistic personality disorder. NYT(reg/req) |
| "One of the most annoying aspects of the internet, spam, is 25 years old this weekend." BBC |
| "A trip to the diet doc, circa 2013. You prick your finger, draw a little blood and send it, along with a $100 fee, to a consumer genomics lab in California. There, it's passed through a mass spectrometer, where its proteins are analyzed. It is cross-referenced with your DNA profile. A few days later, you get an e-mail message with your recommended diet for the next four weeks." NYT's magazine (reg/req) |
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| "Marijuana, pornography and illegal labor have created a hidden market
in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American
economy, according to a study. As a cash crop, marijuana is believed to
have outstripped maize, and hard-core porn revenue is equal to Hollywood's
domestic box office takings.
Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser." UK Guardian |
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| President Bush addressed the nation last night from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California. Here's the full text of his speech formally announcing the end of fighting in Iraq. |
| Mr Rumsfeld ... said it would be 'a terrible mistake to think that
Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment.'
'It is not,' he said. 'It is dangerous. There are people who are rolling hand grenades into compounds.' 'There are people that are shooting people. It is not finished. We ought not to leave the world with the impression that it is.' BBC |
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| "The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?" Newsweek |
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| "The level of welcome for US forces in Iraq has varied greatly from area to area. But nowhere has the atmosphere been more tense than in the town of Falluja, 50 kilometres from Baghdad, where the American troops have opened fire on demonstrators twice this week. BBC correspondent Jennifer Glass reports on the mood of a community that feels under occupation." |
| "To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy." ABC News |
| "If information is the oxygen of democracy, the United States has just been gassed, not by weapons of mass destruction but by a weapon of mass distraction." LA Times |
| "With troops returning from Iraq and Congress applying political pressure,
the Pentagon announced plans to conduct more comprehensive health screenings
of soldiers after their overseas deployments.
The new policy marks an about-face for the military, which until recently had insisted that a brief questionnaire asking returning troops for general health-related information was a sufficient measure of their health. Troops will now receive a face-to-face 'health assessment' from medical personnel and a blood test no later than 30 days after their return." Knight Ridder via Stars and Stripes |
| "Hundreds of worms that were part of an experiment aboard the doomed space shuttle Columbia have been found alive in debris recovered from the crash site, Nasa officials say." BBC |
| "Investors in Australia have rushed to back the country's largest brothel, which has become the first such establishment ever to list on a stock exchange." BBC |
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