DhafirTrial

By Chris Floyd Truthout 1/8/07

I. Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize

The reason that George W. Bush insists that “victory” is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it’s that his definition of “victory” is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. (more…)

By Marjorie Cohn Media With Conscience 1/14/06

In one of the most severe blows the Bush administration has dealt to our constitutional democracy, the Pentagon attacked the lawyers who have volunteered to represent the Guantánamo detainees. (more…)

False allegations from MI5 put my clients in Guantánamo Bay and the British government has failed them abysmally

G Brent Mickum Guardian.co.uk 1/9/07

January 11th marks the confluence of two ignominious anniversaries. The first is the five-year anniversary of the opening of the notorious prison camps run by the US at the Guantánamo naval air station in Cuba. In the five years since the US started shipping prisoners from around the world to Guantánamo, approximately 99% have never been charged with any transgression, much less a crime. (more…)

By Georg Mascolo and Matthias Gebauer Spiegel Online 1/10/07

A Milan prosecutor is making the CIA nervous. Despite the opposition of his own government he wants to indict 26 US agents and five Italian secret agents for the kidnapping of a terror suspect. Rome and Washington would prefer that the embarrassing trial would just go away. (more…)

Urgent Request For Funds To Buy Trial Transcripts:

In direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the brutal U.S. and U.K. sponsored UN embargo on Iraq Dr. Rafil Dhafir started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). For 13 years he worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them, according to the government he donated $1.25 million of his own money. As an oncologist he was particularly concerned about the effects of depleted uranium and skyrocketing Iraqi cancer rates. Because of this humanitatian work he has been incarcerated since February 26, 2003. (more…)

[Thomas Naylor’s book (McGill University Press 2006) “Satanic Purses” has three chapters on what has happened to Muslim charities in the U.S. since 9/11; he talks about Dr. Dhafir and Help the Needy in Chapter 14. Below is a link to a radio interview on Radio Canada]

“One of the key counter-threats launched by US President George W. Bush following the 9-11 attacks was to hunt down the terrorists (more…)

By Barry Lando alternet.org 1/10/07

What is striking about the current debate in Washington – whether to “surge” troops to Iraq and increase the size of the U.S. Army – is that roughly 100,000 bodies are missing from the equation: The number of American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000. (more…)

“The military-industrial-complex [would] cause military spending to be driven not by national security needs but by a network of weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

“There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.” General Smedley D. Butler (more…)