[casi] Last News, 21-28/05/03 (4)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 21-28/05/03 (4)

CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES

*  Senior army officer faces war crime inquiry
*  Preliminary reports suggest casualties well above the Gulf War
*  Blair faces war crimes suit
*  Bush goes boldly in wrong direction

OLD IRAQI ORDER

*  List of Iraqi leaders in U.S. custody
*  Iraq Made $2 Billion a Year in Sanctions-Busting
*  US captures 'king of diamonds'
*  US army chief says Iraqi troops took bribes to surrender
*  Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda
*  Iraqi officers threaten protests, suicide attacks against US
*  Iraq Stashed Illegal Billions Abroad, Say Bankers


CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Q5N540UGARX32CR
BAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=297556

*  SENIOR ARMY OFFICER FACES WAR CRIME INQUIRY
by Sinead O'Hanlon
Reuters, 21st May

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior British Army officer hailed for his
inspirational leadership during the Iraq war is being formally investigated
over alleged war crimes, the Ministry of Defence says.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, who headed the 600-strong 1 Royal Irish
Regiment in southern Iraq, has been accused of breaching the Geneva
Conventions through ill-treatment of prisoners of war.

"We can confirm that an investigation is being conducted into allegations
that have been made against an officer who served in Iraq," a ministry
spokesman said on Wednesday.

"We cannot comment further because of the risk of compromising the
allegations."

The ministry would not name the officer but a defence source confirmed to
Reuters that it was Collins, who has returned from Iraq to Britain.

The origin of the complaints is not known and the ministry spokesman refused
to say what they entailed.

But newspapers reported he was being accused of punching, kicking and
threatening Iraqi prisoners of war and pistol-whipping one Iraqi civic
leader.

Collins could not immediately be reached for comment but the Sun said he
denied the allegations.

The cigar-chomping, sunglass wearing soldier was widely praised for an
inspirational speech made on the eve of battle in which he exhorted his
troops to be ferocious in battle but magnanimous in victory.

A copy of his speech was reportedly tacked to the wall of President George
W. Bush's office while Prince Charles wrote to him to praise his "stirring,
civilised and humane" words.

The Ministry of Defence said it would not release any details of the
investigation, which was expected to include the questioning of witnesses in
Britain and Iraq, until it was completed.

Last week, human rights group Amnesty International said it had received
about 20 complaints from Iraqi civilians and soldiers accusing British and
American troops of torture.

The group said it was still collecting witness statements and had not
corroborated reports of beatings and electric shock treatment or raised the
matter with the authorities.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p01s02-woiq.html

*  PRELIMINARY REPORTS SUGGEST CASUALTIES WELL ABOVE THE GULF WAR.
by Peter Ford
The Christian Science Monitor, 22nd May

BAGHDAD - Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000
Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to
researchers involved in independent surveys of the country. None of the
local and foreign researchers were willing to speak for the record, however,
until their tallies are complete.

Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for
noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.

Though it is still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the
surveyors warn, preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and
homes point to a level of civilian casualties far exceeding the Gulf War,
when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died.

"Thousands are dead, thousands are missing, thousands are captured," says
Haidar Taie, head of the tracing department for the Iraqi Red Crescent in
Baghdad. "It is a big disaster."

By one measure of violence against noncombatants, as compared with
resistance faced by soldiers, the war in Iraq was particularly brutal. In
Operation Just Cause, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, 13 Panamanian
civilians died for every US military fatality. If 5,000 Iraqi civilians died
in the latest war, that proportion would be 33 to 1.

US and British military officials insisted throughout the war that their
forces did all they could to avoid civilian casualties. But it has become
clear since the fighting ended that bombs did go astray, that targets were
chosen in error, and that as US troops pushed rapidly north toward the
capital they killed thousands of civilians from the air and from the ground.

There are no figures at all for Iraqi military casualties, which Iraqi
officials kept secret. One factor that led to many civilian deaths, and
which complicates the task of counting them accurately, is that irregular
fedayeen militia hid in civilian homes as they fought advancing coalition
troops, and dressed as civilians.

Nor are hospital records - kept in the heat of war under intense pressure on
doctors and staff - necessarily accurate, some observers warn. That means
they probably underestimate the real scale of civilian deaths, although at
the same time they may have recorded some combatant casualties as civilian
ones.

"We had some figures from hospital sources but we realized very quickly that
they were very partial," says Nada Doumani, an official with the
International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad. "It is very difficult
to keep track of everyone who was killed, and we were afraid the numbers
could be misinterpreted, so we refrained from giving them out."

"During the war, some people brought bodies to the hospitals to get death
certificates; others just buried them where they were found in the street,
or in schools," adds Faik Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad morgue. "I
don't think anyone in Iraq could give you the figure of civilian deaths at
the moment."

The chaos of the war and the confusion that persists in Iraq, where central
government is still not functioning, have led one US human rights group with
experience in counting civilian casualties in Afghanistan to launch a
nationwide house-to-house survey of areas where fighting was fierce.

The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) has mobilized 150
surveyors to carry out detailed interviews with victims of the war;
recording deaths, injuries, and damage to property with a view to securing
assistance from US government funds.

A full accounting could take months, says CIVIC coordinator Marla Ruzicka,
and the group is still compiling its data. But its volunteers have already
recorded more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the southern town of Nasariyah,
and almost as many in the capital.

"In Baghdad, we have discovered 1,000 graves, and that is not the final
figure," says Ali Ismail, a Red Crescent official. "Every day we discover
more" where local residents say civilians were buried.

Researchers say they have found particularly high levels of civilian
casualties along the Euphrates River, between Nasariyah and Najaf, where US
Marines fought their way toward Baghdad.

"The biggest contrast between Afghanistan (where an estimated 1,800
civilians died during the US-led campaign there in 2001) and Iraq is that
Afghanistan was predominantly an air war and this was a ground/air battle,"
says Reuben Brigety, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"Air wars are not flawless, but if you have precision weapons you can do a
lot to make them more accurate," he adds. "The same is not yet true of
ground combat. It is clear the ground battle took a toll; ground war is
nasty."

Dr. Brigety and his colleagues in Baghdad say they are especially concerned
by the wide use of cluster bombs during the war in Iraq.

They say they have found evidence of "massive use of cluster bombs in
densely populated areas," according to Human Rights Watch researcher Marc
Galasco, contradicting coalition claims that such munitions were used only
in deserted areas.

Dispersing thousands of bomblets that shoot out shards of shrapnel over an
area the size of a football field, such weapons become indiscriminate and
thus illegal under the laws of war, if used in civilian neighborhoods, Human
Rights Watch has argued during past conflicts.

"At one level it is unhelpful to talk about large or small numbers" of
civilian casualties, says Brigety. "It is more important to ask if the
deaths were preventable."

The combination of cluster-bomb use, inaccurate artillery fire at Iraqi
troops concentrated near civilian areas, and street fighting in towns
throughout Iraq means that the number of civilian deaths might be as high as
10,000, say two researchers from two different teams who asked not to be
identified until the evidence was clearer.

Also waiting for clearer evidence are US government agencies mandated by
Congress to assist civilian victims of the war in Iraq.

At the instigation of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, the Iraq war
supplemental bill, signed by President Bush April 16, directs that an
unspecified amount of the $2.4 billion appropriated for relief and
reconstruction in Iraq should pay for "assistance for families of innocent
Iraqi civilians who suffer losses as a result of military operations."

"Perhaps it is impossible to eliminate these kinds of mistakes, but you can
do something for the victims after the fact," says Tim Rieser, an aide to
Senator Leahy.

But that is little comfort to Mahmoud Ali Hamadi. Hugging his 18-month-old
son, Haidar, to his breast for comfort, he cannot hold back his sobs as he
recounts how a US missile that landed by his front gate killed his wife and
three elder children on the night of April 5.

"My children were the brightest in the whole school," he recalls, looking
fondly at an old family photograph through his tears. "Eleven years I spent
raising them, and in one instant I lost them."

Mr. Hamadi's family died in Rashidiya, a village of palm groves and
vegetable plots on the banks of the Tigris, half an hour north of Baghdad.

Nearly 100 villagers were killed by US bombing and strafing on April 5,
including 43 in one house, for reasons that they do not understand. "There
was no military base here," says Hamadi. "We are not military personnel.
This is just a peasant village."

Civilian victims of US military action in Afghanistan - identified by a team
led by Ruzicka - are also supposed to receive assistance. So far, however,
USAID has not disbursed any of that money, citing security risks and other
problems in the parts of Afghanistan where the money is meant to be spent.

"We have a responsibility to provide assistance, especially when we were the
cause," says Mr. Rieser.

"It is in our interest to make the point that this was not a war against the
Iraqi people," he says. Senator Leahy's hope, he adds, is that the aid will
"build goodwill for the US, which seems to be shrinking by the day in Iraq."

That would appear to be a vain hope in the case of Hamadi, as he mourns the
loss of his family. "The Americans are assassins," he says wearily, his face
worn by grief. "I haven't complained to the Americans. What would I get if I
complained to them? I have complained only to God."

‹ Nongovernmental and media organizations have produced widely varying
figures on the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the recent conflict.
The range is a result of incomplete, unconfirmable, and unavailable
information.

‹ Iraqbodycount.net, a website that draws on media accounts and eyewitness
reports, estimates that between 4,065 and 5,223 Iraqi civilians have been
killed as a result of coalition military action, both during and after the
war.

‹ A May 15 Associated Press report gives an estimate of 2,100 to 2,600
civilian deaths, without citing sources.

‹ The US Department of Defense has refused to give any sort of estimate on
deaths.

‹ Two news organizations have produced estimates of civilian casualties in
just the Baghdad area by canvassing hospitals and tallying their records.
The Los Angeles Times reported on May 18 that probably between 1,700 and
2,700 civilians were killed in and around Baghdad. The Knight Ridder agency
published an estimate of between 1,100 and 2,355 on May 4.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2933140.stm

*  BLAIR FACES WAR CRIMES SUIT
BBC, 23rd May

Greek lawyers say they are going to sue British officials - including Prime
Minister Tony Blair - for their role in the Iraq war.

The Athens Bar Association says it will file a suit against Britain at the
International Criminal Court - the recently created tribunal for cases of
war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The lawyers call the
attacks by the United States and British forces against Iraq "crimes against
humanity and war crimes".

They have listed a number of international treaties they say the two
countries have violated.

These include the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague
Convention and the International Criminal Court's statute.

Dimitris Paxinos, the head of the lawyers' association, told the BBC the
lawsuit will be filed within a fortnight. He said American officials could
not be prosecuted as the US is not a signatory to the ICC's founding treaty.
Eighty-nine countries signed up to the treaty creating the court, which was
formally inaugurated in March in The Hague.

Mr Paxinos, who was elected by a conservative majority, says he is confident
that the evidence compiled by the lawyers is strong, adding that the case
would be a test of the ICC's credibility.

The ICC is not working yet. Last month it appointed an Argentine lawyer,
Luis Moreno Ocampo, to be its first prosecutor.

A spokeswoman for the court told BBC News Online that only after Mr Ocampo
was sworn in on 16 June would the court consider the Greek lawyers' case.

"We have received more than 200 communications from different parts of the
world," she said. The British Prime Minister's office has declined to
comment on the announcement.

According to the BBC's Panos Polyzoidis in Athens, the move is also unlikely
to go down well with the Greek Government as it will act as a reminder of
the Greek public's strong anti war feeling, which cuts across party lines.


http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse27.html

*  BUSH GOES BOLDY IN WRONG DIRECTION
by Jesse Jackson
Chicago Sun Times, 27th May

They got their war in Iraq. They succeeded in keeping the UN and the allies
out of the reconstruction. They got their tax cuts, even more skewed to the
wealthy than the original plan. They are getting the vast majority of their
judicial nominees, even as they howl about obstruction. They are enforcing
their rollback of environmental regulations, women's rights and civil
rights.

Be careful what you wish for. With remarkable message discipline out of the
White House and party discipline in the Congress, the activists of the right
have proved they are in control. And they are responsible--and that is the
canker.

Bush likes to say he didn't cause the recession, or the stock market
collapse or Sept. 11, or the corporate crime wave. And to a large extent,
that is right. But the question isn't how we got into this hole, the
question is how we get out. And increasingly it seems like Bush's policies
are digging us in deeper rather than lifting us out.

In Iraq, the postwar scene is, by all accounts, chaos. Crime, looting,
hospitals without medicine, cities without electricity--even our own Iraqi
clients complain that the United States and Britain aren't running the peace
as well as the war. A civil war has already started inside Iraq, as Shiites
and Sunnis, Kurds and Turks start jockeying for power and security. The
administration has told the UN and the allies to stay out. UN inspectors are
not allowed. UN administrators are kept on the sidelines. Allied companies
are shut out of contracts.

The result is that the United States has the responsibility--and gets the
blame. And the American people will bear the cost, most likely without much
help. The administration asked for $75 billion as a down payment on the war.
It is likely to ask for the same amount as a down payment for reconstructing
Iraq.

That $75 billion will go to Iraq even as U.S. schools are laying off
teachers, cities are firing cops, states are cutting back on health clinics
and preschool programs. In the first Gulf War, the president's father
assembled a broad international alliance, gained the support of the Arab
nations and got the international community to pay for the war. The
administration got what it wished for: total control over Iraq. And now U.S.
taxpayers bear the burden, and the United States will bear the blame for
anything that goes wrong.

At home, the president got his tax cuts--the actual package created to
ensure that it is likely to cost not $350 billion but almost $1 trillion
over the next 10 years. Millionaires will pocket more than one-fourth of the
projected tax break.

No one doubts that movement conservatives have taken control; they dominate
the Republican Senate and the House and drive the administration's policies.

But to date, they have failed to demonstrate that they have the policies
that can deal with the challenges this country faces. Their tax cuts will
feed the staggering deficits. An editorial in the conservative Financial
Times calls it ''tax lunacy,'' saying that ''watching the world's economic
superpower slowly destroy perhaps the world's most enviable fiscal position
is something to behold.''

''Shock and awe'' in Iraq, from what we have seen, is generating more
terrorist threats against the United States, not fewer. Now the
administration warns that al-Qaida has ''reconstituted'' itself and poses a
renewed threat of terror in the United States.

The right-wing judges packing the courts are intent on rolling back
affirmative action, revoking women's right to choose, and crippling the
government's ability to regulate corporations to protect citizens, workers
or the environment. The polluters in charge of the environmental agencies
are intent on rolling back regulation, allowing companies to mine wilderness
areas and ignoring global warming.

This is a bold administration with bold plans. It has the power. But to
date, its policies seem to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.


OLD IRAQI ORDER

http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/international/ap_mostwanted05212003.htm

*  LIST OF IRAQI LEADERS IN U.S. CUSTODY
Reuters, 21st May

LONDON - The U.S. military said Ugla Abid Sighar al-Kubeiysi, a former
member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who is on Washington's list of
most-wanted Iraqis, was in the custody of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The number of people on the list known to have surrendered or been captured
is now 24.

Following is a list of those so far reported in custody:

April 12 - AMER HAMMOUDI AL-SAADI - Saddam's top scientific adviser, who
liaised with U.N. weapons inspectors, surrendered after learning he was No.
32 on the list.

April 13 - WATBAN IBRAHIM HASAN AL-TIKRITI - Saddam's half-brother was
turned over to the U.S. military. Saddam removed him as interior minister in
1995 but he remained a presidential adviser. Watban was No. 37 on the list.

April 17 - BARZAN IBRAHIM HASAN AL-TIKRITI - Saddam's half-brother was
captured by U.S. special forces in Baghdad. Barzan ran Iraq's intelligence
service from 1979 to 1983 and was Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in
Geneva from 1988 to 1997. He was No. 38.

April 17 - SAMIR ABDULAZIZ AL-NAJIM - The Baath Party regional command
chairman for east Baghdad, and No. 42 on the U.S. most-wanted list. He was
handed over to U.S.-led forces by Iraqi Kurds near Mosul.

April 19 - HIKMAT IBRAHIM AL-AZZAWI - Saddam's finance minister, also a
deputy prime minister, was taken into custody in Baghdad after being
captured by Iraqi police. He was No. 28.

April 19 - HUMAM ABDUL-KHALEQ ABDUL-GHAFUR - Saddam's minister of higher
education and scientific research, and No. 43 on the list, was taken into
custody by U.S.-led troops.

April 21 - JAMAL MUSTAFA SULTAN AL-TIKRITI - The Iraqi National Congress
said Jamal, No. 22 on the list, returned from Syria to surrender and was
handed to U.S. forces. The INC said Jamal served as Saddam's private
secretary until his overthrow. He was Saddam's only surviving son-in-law.

April 21 - MOHAMMED HAMZA AL-ZUBEIDI - The INC said this regional commander
and former Iraqi deputy prime minister, No. 9 on the list, was captured by
Free Iraqi Forces and handed over to U.S. custody.

April 23 - ZUHAYR TALIB ABD AL SATTAR AL NAQIB - This general who headed
military intelligence surrendered to U.S. forces in Baghdad. Naqib was No.
31 on the U.S. list.

April 23 - MUZAHIM SA'B HASSAN AL-TIKRITI - Air Defence Force commander and
No. 12 on the U.S. military's list.

April 23 - MOHAMMED MEHDI SALEH - Iraqi minister of trade, No. 35 on the
list.

April 24 - TAREQ AZIZ - Deputy prime minister and No. 25 on the U.S. list.
Aziz also played a starring diplomatic role during the 1991 Gulf War when he
was foreign minister.

April 26 - GENERAL HUSSAM MOHAMMED AMIN - Head of Iraq's National Monitoring
Directorate. He was No. 34 on the U.S. list. A U.S. military source said he
was caught at Ramadi, west of Baghdad on the road to Jordan and Syria.

April 28 - AMIR MUHAMMED RASHEED - Veteran oil minister surrendered. He ran
Iraq's military industries until becoming oil minister in 1995. He was No.
33 on the U.S. list. His wife is bioweapons scientist Rihab Taha, widely
known as ``Dr Germ.'' She is not on the list but it was announced on May 12
that she has been taken into custody.

April 29 - WALID HAMID TAWFIQ AL-TIKRITI - No. 26 on the U.S. list, he was
the governor of Basra province under Saddam. He gave himself up to the Iraqi
National Congress office in Baghdad.

May 2 - ABDUL TAWAB MULLAH HWAISH - Minister of military industrialisation
and No. 19 on the wanted list.

May 2 - TAHA MOHIEDDIN MA'ROUF - An Iraqi vice president and member of
Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, Hwaish was No. 24 on the wanted
list.

May 5 - HUDA SALIH MAHDI AMMASH - Designated as No. 39 on the wanted list,
Ammash is a biological weapons scientist involved in Saddam's weapons of
mass destruction programme. Known by U.S. intelligence as ``Mrs Anthrax,''
she was also identified as a Baath Party regional command member.

May 7 - GHAZI HAMUD AL-ADIB - No. 51 on the wanted list, al-Adib was the
Baath Party regional chairman and militia commander for the Wasit
governorate including the city of Kut.

May 12 - IBRAHIM AHMAD ABD AL SATTAR MUHAMMAD AL TIKRITI - No. 13 on the
list, is the former armed forces chief of staff.

May 13 - FADIL MAHMUD GHARIB - ranked No. 47 on the list, and a member of
Saddam's Baath Party regional command and chairman for the Babil district.
He is also known as Gharib Muhammad Fazel al-Mashaikh.

May 15 - ADIL ABDALLAH MAHDI AL-DURI AL-TIKRITI - Baath Party regional
chairman in the Dhi Qar Governorate, was seized in a raid near Tikrit. He is
ranked as No. 52 on the list.

May 17 - KAMAL MUSTAFA ABDALLAH SULTAN AL-TIKRITI - ranked No. 10, he was
one of Saddam Hussein's most trusted generals, the former secretary of the
feared Republican Guard.

May 20 - UGLA ABID SIGHAR AL-KUBEIYSI - Baath Party regional chairman in
Maysan governorate and No. 50 on the wanted list.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2777711

*  IRAQ MADE $2 BILLION A YEAR IN SANCTIONS-BUSTING
by Peg Mackey
Reuters, 20th May

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein raked in $2 billion a year in a
sanctions-busting ploy that kept the former Iraqi president in luxury and
the dilapidated oil sector alive, an Iraqi oil industry executive said
Tuesday.

In the eyes of the United States, Iraq was smuggling 280,000 barrels per day
(bpd) of crude oil to Syria and Turkey illegally to fill Saddam's coffers
and purchase components for banned weapons of mass destruction.

But for many in Iraq, the former Oil Minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed was
conducting "barter trade" outside United Nations supervision, helping to
generate cash to buy equipment for the country's cash-starved oil network,
the executive said.

"I considered it a patriotic duty to break the embargo. It was Amir
Rasheed's greatest achievement," the executive, who requested anonymity,
told Reuters. "Some of the money went to the presidential account to build
palaces and buy luxury cars for Saddam's cronies. But the remainder was used
for medicine, spare parts and equipment."

Payment to Baghdad was made in cash and in kind. Goods made up about 70
percent of the invoice, and the rest was paid in hard cash, some $600
million a year.

"In local terms, that's a lot of money," he said. Iraq sold most of its oil
under U.N. control via the oil-for-food program, but Baghdad managed to
break out of the sanctions straitjacket.

Its most daring bid to gain control over oil revenues was made two years ago
when it started to ship 180,000 bpd of oil to Damascus via the Iraq-Syria
pipeline, an arrangement which netted about $1 billion a year, the executive
said.

A pumping station on the pipeline was targeted by U.S. bombers in the early
days of the war to cut off the flow to Syria.

The deals with Iraq's neighbors -- led by Rasheed and carried out by the
rank and file -- reaped benefits for all. Syria and Turkey got cheap oil,
while Iraq got cash and goods while living under a stringent economic
embargo.

"Syria's economy started to boom thanks to Iraq," said the executive. "Let
us see what happens when Iraq's economic motor has stopped."

Iraq sold its crude to Damascus and Ankara at a steep discount versus the
international market. The formula was the declared price of oil at Turkey's
Ceyhan outlet for Iraqi crude, minus a hefty discount of $7 a barrel, the
source said.

Syria paid for half the oil in manufactured goods and the remainder went
into Iraqi bank accounts in Syria. "Thanks to this trade we were getting
most of the contracts that were not approved by the U.N. sanctions
committee, vital spare parts for the refineries, chemicals and spare parts,"
said the oil executive.

The Turkish deal was tighter in terms of the cash component, which was only
30 percent, he said. Some 80,000 bpd of crude and some quantities of fuel
oil netted Iraq close to $1 billion a year from Turkey, he said.

Iraq was also exporting fuel oil out of the Gulf at the cheap rate of about
$50 a ton.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,961660,00.html

*  US CAPTURES 'KING OF DIAMONDS'
The Guardian, 23rd May

The eighth most wanted person on the US central command's list of Iraqi
fugitives has been captured, it was announced today.

Aziz Sajih al-Numan, a former senior Ba'ath party leader, was taken into
custody yesterday and is the highest-ranking person on the 55-strong list to
have been captured. So far, 25 people from the list are in coalition
custody, according to the Pentagon.

Numan was the king of diamonds in the pack of playing cards distributed by
the US in Iraq featuring its most wanted figures from the deposed regime.

A brief central command statement said Aziz Sajih al-Numan "is now in
custody of coalition forces" having been arrested near Baghdad.

He was identified as the Ba'ath party's regional command chairman
responsible for west Baghdad. He also is a former governor of Karbala and
Najaf, according to the central command statement.

Numan was army commander during the 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait, and is
said to have personally overseen the summary execution of those who took
part in the Shia uprising after the first Gulf war.

Until now, the highest ranking Iraqi to have been captured was Muhammad
Hamza a Zubaydi, the former deputy prime minister and former Ba'ath party
regional command member. He was caught on April 20.

On Tuesday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,
announced the surrender of Uglah Abid Saqir al-Kubaysi, No 50 on the list.
Gen Myers said al-Kubaysi turned himself in on Monday. He was a leader of
the Ba'ath party in the Maysan region of south-eastern Iraq.

Other members of the deposed regime earning the diamond suit in the US's
most wanted deck of cards were Ali Hassan Majeed, the key presidential
adviser who got the nickname "Chemical Ali" for using weapons against
Iranians and Kurds; Hani Abd Latif Tilfah al Tikriti, a director of the
special security organization; and Izzat Ibrahim Duri, a party vice
chairman.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=409090

*  US ARMY CHIEF SAYS IRAQI TROOPS TOOK BRIBES TO SURRENDER
by Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, 24th May

Senior Iraqi officers who commanded troops crucial to the defence of key
Iraqi cities were bribed not to fight by American special forces, the US
general in charge of the war has confirmed.

Well before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence
agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was
deemed important to a swift, low casualty victory.

General Tommy Franks, the US army commander for the war, said these Iraqi
officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi
leader, Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters. As a result,
many officers chose not to defend their positions as American and British
forces pushed north from Kuwait.

"I had letters from Iraqi generals saying: 'I now work for you'," General
Franks said.

It is not clear which Iraqi officers were bribed, how many were bought off
or at what cost. It is likely, however, that the US focused on officers in
control of Saddam's elite forces, which were expected to defend the capital.
The Pentagon said that bribing the senior officers was a cost-effective
method of fighting and one that led to fewer casualties.

"What is the effect you want?" a senior Pentagon official said. "How much
does a cruise missile cost? Between $1m and $2.5m. Well, a bribe is a PGM
[precision guided missile) - it achieves the aim but it's bloodless and
there's zero collateral damage.

"This part of the operation was as important as the shooting part; maybe
more important. We knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty
and patriotism, and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we
knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he
added.

The revelation by General Franks, who this week announced his intention to
retire as commander of US Central Command, helps explain one of the enduring
mysteries of the US led war against Iraq: why Iraqi forces did not make a
greater stand in their defence of Baghdad, in many cases melting away and
changing into civilian clothes rather than forcing the allied troops to
engage in bitter, street-to-street fighting.

John Pike, director of the Washington-based military research group,
GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "It certainly strikes me that this is part of the
mix. I don't think there is any way of discerning how big a part of the mix
it is ... but it is part of the long queue of very interesting questions for
which we do not yet have definitive answers." In the run-up to the war
against Iraq, the Pentagon revealed its ambitious efforts to try to
encourage Iraqi soldiers and officers to lay down their weapons rather than
stand and fight.

As American and British troops massed in northern Kuwait in preparation,
millions of leaflets printed in Arabic were dropped over towns and cities
where troops were thought to be concentrated, urging them not to support
Saddam. The leaflets gave specific instructions as to how the troops should
surrender and included such information as ensuring that all tanks turrets
were turned around and pointed towards the north. Senior officers were also
targeted by US psy-ops officers using e-mails and telephone calls to their
private addresses and mobile phones.

As a result, while some Iraqi forces - especially those supported by
militias - put up staunch resistance in several cities as Allied forces
marched north, many thousands of Iraqi soldiers chose not to fight, in most
cases simply throwing off their uniforms and going home to their families.

But the confirmation - revealed in the current edition of Defence News by
reporter Vago Muradian - that crucial senior officers were bribed, would
explain why there was so little resistance in locations where it was
anticipated that better-trained troops such as the Republican Guard would
make a stand.

Some of the techniques employed by the Pentagon to persuade Iraqi troops not
to fight were used with some success in the recent war in Afghanistan, where
US special forces carried with them considerable sums of money in dollar
bills to buy off warlords whose support was deemed crucial to the war
effort.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/23/1053585696870.html

*  DOCTORS TELL HOW CHILDREN'S DEATHS BECAME PROPAGANDA
by Matthew McAllester in Baghdad
Sydney Morning Herald, 24th May

Throughout the 13 years of United Nations sanctions on Iraq that were ended
on Thursday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole
cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr Ghassam Rashid al-Baya said on
May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn al-Baladi Hospital, just after a dehydrated
baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on
Iraq."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of articles by reporters who were always
escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.

Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn
al-Baladi, tell a very different story.

Along with parents of dead children, they said this week that Saddam turned
the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save
babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.

All the evidence is that the spike in children's deaths was tragically real
- roughly, a doubling of the mortality rate during the 1990s, humanitarian
organisations estimate. But the reason has been fiercely argued, and new
accounts by Iraqi doctors and parents will alter the debate.

Under the sanctions regime, "we had the ability to get all the drugs we
needed", said Ibn al Baladi's chief resident, Dr Hussein Shihab. "Instead of
that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all
the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much,
because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we
can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

Washington and others have long blamed Saddam's spending habits for the poor
health of Iraqis. For years, the Iraqi government, some Western officials
and the anti-sanctions movement said UN restrictions on Iraqi imports and
exports were at fault.

Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues
until the authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly
parades in small coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi
state television and visiting journalists.

The parents were ordered to wail with grief - no matter how many weeks had
passed since their babies had died - and to shout to the cameras that the
sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterwards, the
parents would be rewarded with food or money.

"I am one of the doctors who was forced to tell something wrong, that these
children died from the fault of the UN," Dr Shihab said, sitting in his
hospital's staff room with his deputy, another doctor and one of the
hospital's administrators.

"But I am afraid if I tell the true thing . . ." Dr Shihab paused. Using the
present tense in English to describe the prewar past, he continued: "They
will kill me. Me and my family and my uncle and my aunt - everyone."

The last baby parade involving Ibn al-Baladi was in 2001, said Kamal
Khadoum, a hospital administrator. He did not know why the practice was
stopped.


http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/may/27/27052003ap.htm

*  IRAQI OFFICERS THREATEN PROTESTS, SUICIDE ATTACKS AGAINST US
Bangladeshi Independent, from AFP, 27th May

[.....]

Former Iraqi regime officials, meanwhile, said the sudden fall of Baghdad on
April 9 was the result of acts of betrayal by three of president Saddam
Hussein 's cousins, senior military officers, and a former cabinet minister.

According to the officials, Saddam's cousins ordered troops not to fight
against the US-led coalition and issued reports saying that the Iraqi leader
was dead.

"The head of the Republican Guard Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, who was
considered the shadow of Saddam, told the troops not to fight when US forces
entered Baghdad on April 8," one of the sources said on condition of
anonymity.

At the same time a rumour that Saddam was killed in the bombing of the
Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Mansur on April 7 began to spread among
government members.

The information was spread by a cabinet minister, the source said, refusing
to identify him. "This minister was then evacuated by American troops along
with his family and now lives in a European country."

And since the war, Saddam's elder son Uday has tried to contact US
occupation officials in Baghdad through an intermediary to negotiate a safe
surrender, Time magazine reported in its latest edition.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, paid its first
visit to prisoners held by the coalition in the Baghdad region, including
many from the most-wanted list of 55 former Iraqi leaders.


http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2816880

*  IRAQ STASHED ILLEGAL BILLIONS ABROAD, SAY BANKERS
by Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Reuters, 26th May

BAGHDAD: Iraq illegally stashed away billions of dollars in cash from oil
deals with foreign firms in Lebanese and Jordanian banks and some of the
money is still there, senior Iraqi and Arab bankers said.

The government transferred most of the cash it received from companies,
including possibly Western firms, to Baghdad where it was feared lost in the
looting that erupted after U.S.-led forces toppled president Saddam Hussein
last month.

But Iraqi government accounts still have at least $500 million in Lebanon
and significantly more in Jordan while other funds are now beyond recovery
in private hands, said the bankers, some of whom represented Iraq in dealing
with foreign banks.

Iraq was under United Nations sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait
until they were lifted last week. A 1996 agreement allowed it to sell oil in
exchange for food and essential supplies, not cash.

"Saddam Hussein could not run Iraq without cash," a senior Iraqi banker
said. "Iraq asked foreign companies to give it cash on top of the goods
bought under the oil for food deal. We were not getting a penny from selling
oil."

A sanctions committee dominated by the United States and Britain paid the
companies supplying Baghdad from the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales.

The bankers said the foreign companies that won contracts under the
so-called oil-for-food program may have paid 10 percent of the contract
value in cash to Jordanian and Lebanese accounts.

An Iraqi bank executive gave an example of a U.N.-approved $100 million
contract signed by Iraq to buy food.

"The company that wins the contract would send Iraq food for $75 million and
put another $10 million or more in the Jordanian or Lebanese bank account.
It would also make cash profit for itself," he said.

German, British, French and American companies may have been involved in
such deals, he said.

"The accounts I know of in Lebanon are in the name of Iraqi ministries. The
Iraqi government publicly requested the 10 percent," the banker said.

"In the best of times total Iraqi government deposits in Lebanese private
banks was less than $1 billion. Jordan had significantly more."

Jordan froze Iraq's public accounts at the start of the U.S.-led war but a
Jordanian banker said Iraq relied on individuals and companies to receive
the cash.

"The chaos of the war means that cash belonging to Iraq ended in private
hands and could never be traced," he said.

Iraqi bankers said the Iraqi government stepped up withdrawals from Lebanon
and Jordan after the United States pressed the two countries to crack down
on money laundering last year.

The bankers said Saddam's son Qusay did not steal money from the central
bank before the war as some media reports suggested.

They said Iraq's finance minister and officials of the now ousted Ba'ath
party, acting on Saddam's orders, moved around $1 billion and an unknown
amount of gold from the central bank just before the U.S.-led invasion began
on March 20.

They stashed the money away for safekeeping in and around Baghdad, including
at least $400 million in two government bank branches that were looted.




CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES

*  Senior army officer faces war crime inquiry
*  Preliminary reports suggest casualties well above the Gulf War
*  Blair faces war crimes suit
*  Bush goes boldly in wrong direction

OLD IRAQI ORDER

*  List of Iraqi leaders in U.S. custody
*  Iraq Made $2 Billion a Year in Sanctions-Busting
*  US captures 'king of diamonds'
*  US army chief says Iraqi troops took bribes to surrender
*  Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda
*  Iraqi officers threaten protests, suicide attacks against US
*  Iraq Stashed Illegal Billions Abroad, Say Bankers


CONDUCT OF THE ALLIES

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Q5N540UGARX32CR
BAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=297556

*  SENIOR ARMY OFFICER FACES WAR CRIME INQUIRY
by Sinead O'Hanlon
Reuters, 21st May

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior British Army officer hailed for his
inspirational leadership during the Iraq war is being formally investigated
over alleged war crimes, the Ministry of Defence says.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, who headed the 600-strong 1 Royal Irish
Regiment in southern Iraq, has been accused of breaching the Geneva
Conventions through ill-treatment of prisoners of war.

"We can confirm that an investigation is being conducted into allegations
that have been made against an officer who served in Iraq," a ministry
spokesman said on Wednesday.

"We cannot comment further because of the risk of compromising the
allegations."

The ministry would not name the officer but a defence source confirmed to
Reuters that it was Collins, who has returned from Iraq to Britain.

The origin of the complaints is not known and the ministry spokesman refused
to say what they entailed.

But newspapers reported he was being accused of punching, kicking and
threatening Iraqi prisoners of war and pistol-whipping one Iraqi civic
leader.

Collins could not immediately be reached for comment but the Sun said he
denied the allegations.

The cigar-chomping, sunglass wearing soldier was widely praised for an
inspirational speech made on the eve of battle in which he exhorted his
troops to be ferocious in battle but magnanimous in victory.

A copy of his speech was reportedly tacked to the wall of President George
W. Bush's office while Prince Charles wrote to him to praise his "stirring,
civilised and humane" words.

The Ministry of Defence said it would not release any details of the
investigation, which was expected to include the questioning of witnesses in
Britain and Iraq, until it was completed.

Last week, human rights group Amnesty International said it had received
about 20 complaints from Iraqi civilians and soldiers accusing British and
American troops of torture.

The group said it was still collecting witness statements and had not
corroborated reports of beatings and electric shock treatment or raised the
matter with the authorities.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p01s02-woiq.html

*  PRELIMINARY REPORTS SUGGEST CASUALTIES WELL ABOVE THE GULF WAR.
by Peter Ford
The Christian Science Monitor, 22nd May

BAGHDAD - Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000
Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to
researchers involved in independent surveys of the country. None of the
local and foreign researchers were willing to speak for the record, however,
until their tallies are complete.

Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for
noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.

Though it is still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the
surveyors warn, preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and
homes point to a level of civilian casualties far exceeding the Gulf War,
when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died.

"Thousands are dead, thousands are missing, thousands are captured," says
Haidar Taie, head of the tracing department for the Iraqi Red Crescent in
Baghdad. "It is a big disaster."

By one measure of violence against noncombatants, as compared with
resistance faced by soldiers, the war in Iraq was particularly brutal. In
Operation Just Cause, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, 13 Panamanian
civilians died for every US military fatality. If 5,000 Iraqi civilians died
in the latest war, that proportion would be 33 to 1.

US and British military officials insisted throughout the war that their
forces did all they could to avoid civilian casualties. But it has become
clear since the fighting ended that bombs did go astray, that targets were
chosen in error, and that as US troops pushed rapidly north toward the
capital they killed thousands of civilians from the air and from the ground.

There are no figures at all for Iraqi military casualties, which Iraqi
officials kept secret. One factor that led to many civilian deaths, and
which complicates the task of counting them accurately, is that irregular
fedayeen militia hid in civilian homes as they fought advancing coalition
troops, and dressed as civilians.

Nor are hospital records - kept in the heat of war under intense pressure on
doctors and staff - necessarily accurate, some observers warn. That means
they probably underestimate the real scale of civilian deaths, although at
the same time they may have recorded some combatant casualties as civilian
ones.

"We had some figures from hospital sources but we realized very quickly that
they were very partial," says Nada Doumani, an official with the
International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad. "It is very difficult
to keep track of everyone who was killed, and we were afraid the numbers
could be misinterpreted, so we refrained from giving them out."

"During the war, some people brought bodies to the hospitals to get death
certificates; others just buried them where they were found in the street,
or in schools," adds Faik Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad morgue. "I
don't think anyone in Iraq could give you the figure of civilian deaths at
the moment."

The chaos of the war and the confusion that persists in Iraq, where central
government is still not functioning, have led one US human rights group with
experience in counting civilian casualties in Afghanistan to launch a
nationwide house-to-house survey of areas where fighting was fierce.

The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) has mobilized 150
surveyors to carry out detailed interviews with victims of the war;
recording deaths, injuries, and damage to property with a view to securing
assistance from US government funds.

A full accounting could take months, says CIVIC coordinator Marla Ruzicka,
and the group is still compiling its data. But its volunteers have already
recorded more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the southern town of Nasariyah,
and almost as many in the capital.

"In Baghdad, we have discovered 1,000 graves, and that is not the final
figure," says Ali Ismail, a Red Crescent official. "Every day we discover
more" where local residents say civilians were buried.

Researchers say they have found particularly high levels of civilian
casualties along the Euphrates River, between Nasariyah and Najaf, where US
Marines fought their way toward Baghdad.

"The biggest contrast between Afghanistan (where an estimated 1,800
civilians died during the US-led campaign there in 2001) and Iraq is that
Afghanistan was predominantly an air war and this was a ground/air battle,"
says Reuben Brigety, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"Air wars are not flawless, but if you have precision weapons you can do a
lot to make them more accurate," he adds. "The same is not yet true of
ground combat. It is clear the ground battle took a toll; ground war is
nasty."

Dr. Brigety and his colleagues in Baghdad say they are especially concerned
by the wide use of cluster bombs during the war in Iraq.

They say they have found evidence of "massive use of cluster bombs in
densely populated areas," according to Human Rights Watch researcher Marc
Galasco, contradicting coalition claims that such munitions were used only
in deserted areas.

Dispersing thousands of bomblets that shoot out shards of shrapnel over an
area the size of a football field, such weapons become indiscriminate and
thus illegal under the laws of war, if used in civilian neighborhoods, Human
Rights Watch has argued during past conflicts.

"At one level it is unhelpful to talk about large or small numbers" of
civilian casualties, says Brigety. "It is more important to ask if the
deaths were preventable."

The combination of cluster-bomb use, inaccurate artillery fire at Iraqi
troops concentrated near civilian areas, and street fighting in towns
throughout Iraq means that the number of civilian deaths might be as high as
10,000, say two researchers from two different teams who asked not to be
identified until the evidence was clearer.

Also waiting for clearer evidence are US government agencies mandated by
Congress to assist civilian victims of the war in Iraq.

At the instigation of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, the Iraq war
supplemental bill, signed by President Bush April 16, directs that an
unspecified amount of the $2.4 billion appropriated for relief and
reconstruction in Iraq should pay for "assistance for families of innocent
Iraqi civilians who suffer losses as a result of military operations."

"Perhaps it is impossible to eliminate these kinds of mistakes, but you can
do something for the victims after the fact," says Tim Rieser, an aide to
Senator Leahy.

But that is little comfort to Mahmoud Ali Hamadi. Hugging his 18-month-old
son, Haidar, to his breast for comfort, he cannot hold back his sobs as he
recounts how a US missile that landed by his front gate killed his wife and
three elder children on the night of April 5.

"My children were the brightest in the whole school," he recalls, looking
fondly at an old family photograph through his tears. "Eleven years I spent
raising them, and in one instant I lost them."

Mr. Hamadi's family died in Rashidiya, a village of palm groves and
vegetable plots on the banks of the Tigris, half an hour north of Baghdad.

Nearly 100 villagers were killed by US bombing and strafing on April 5,
including 43 in one house, for reasons that they do not understand. "There
was no military base here," says Hamadi. "We are not military personnel.
This is just a peasant village."

Civilian victims of US military action in Afghanistan - identified by a team
led by Ruzicka - are also supposed to receive assistance. So far, however,
USAID has not disbursed any of that money, citing security risks and other
problems in the parts of Afghanistan where the money is meant to be spent.

"We have a responsibility to provide assistance, especially when we were the
cause," says Mr. Rieser.

"It is in our interest to make the point that this was not a war against the
Iraqi people," he says. Senator Leahy's hope, he adds, is that the aid will
"build goodwill for the US, which seems to be shrinking by the day in Iraq."

That would appear to be a vain hope in the case of Hamadi, as he mourns the
loss of his family. "The Americans are assassins," he says wearily, his face
worn by grief. "I haven't complained to the Americans. What would I get if I
complained to them? I have complained only to God."

‹ Nongovernmental and media organizations have produced widely varying
figures on the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the recent conflict.
The range is a result of incomplete, unconfirmable, and unavailable
information.

‹ Iraqbodycount.net, a website that draws on media accounts and eyewitness
reports, estimates that between 4,065 and 5,223 Iraqi civilians have been
killed as a result of coalition military action, both during and after the
war.

‹ A May 15 Associated Press report gives an estimate of 2,100 to 2,600
civilian deaths, without citing sources.

‹ The US Department of Defense has refused to give any sort of estimate on
deaths.

‹ Two news organizations have produced estimates of civilian casualties in
just the Baghdad area by canvassing hospitals and tallying their records.
The Los Angeles Times reported on May 18 that probably between 1,700 and
2,700 civilians were killed in and around Baghdad. The Knight Ridder agency
published an estimate of between 1,100 and 2,355 on May 4.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2933140.stm

*  BLAIR FACES WAR CRIMES SUIT
BBC, 23rd May

Greek lawyers say they are going to sue British officials - including Prime
Minister Tony Blair - for their role in the Iraq war.

The Athens Bar Association says it will file a suit against Britain at the
International Criminal Court - the recently created tribunal for cases of
war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The lawyers call the
attacks by the United States and British forces against Iraq "crimes against
humanity and war crimes".

They have listed a number of international treaties they say the two
countries have violated.

These include the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague
Convention and the International Criminal Court's statute.

Dimitris Paxinos, the head of the lawyers' association, told the BBC the
lawsuit will be filed within a fortnight. He said American officials could
not be prosecuted as the US is not a signatory to the ICC's founding treaty.
Eighty-nine countries signed up to the treaty creating the court, which was
formally inaugurated in March in The Hague.

Mr Paxinos, who was elected by a conservative majority, says he is confident
that the evidence compiled by the lawyers is strong, adding that the case
would be a test of the ICC's credibility.

The ICC is not working yet. Last month it appointed an Argentine lawyer,
Luis Moreno Ocampo, to be its first prosecutor.

A spokeswoman for the court told BBC News Online that only after Mr Ocampo
was sworn in on 16 June would the court consider the Greek lawyers' case.

"We have received more than 200 communications from different parts of the
world," she said. The British Prime Minister's office has declined to
comment on the announcement.

According to the BBC's Panos Polyzoidis in Athens, the move is also unlikely
to go down well with the Greek Government as it will act as a reminder of
the Greek public's strong anti war feeling, which cuts across party lines.


http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse27.html

*  BUSH GOES BOLDY IN WRONG DIRECTION
by Jesse Jackson
Chicago Sun Times, 27th May

They got their war in Iraq. They succeeded in keeping the UN and the allies
out of the reconstruction. They got their tax cuts, even more skewed to the
wealthy than the original plan. They are getting the vast majority of their
judicial nominees, even as they howl about obstruction. They are enforcing
their rollback of environmental regulations, women's rights and civil
rights.

Be careful what you wish for. With remarkable message discipline out of the
White House and party discipline in the Congress, the activists of the right
have proved they are in control. And they are responsible--and that is the
canker.

Bush likes to say he didn't cause the recession, or the stock market
collapse or Sept. 11, or the corporate crime wave. And to a large extent,
that is right. But the question isn't how we got into this hole, the
question is how we get out. And increasingly it seems like Bush's policies
are digging us in deeper rather than lifting us out.

In Iraq, the postwar scene is, by all accounts, chaos. Crime, looting,
hospitals without medicine, cities without electricity--even our own Iraqi
clients complain that the United States and Britain aren't running the peace
as well as the war. A civil war has already started inside Iraq, as Shiites
and Sunnis, Kurds and Turks start jockeying for power and security. The
administration has told the UN and the allies to stay out. UN inspectors are
not allowed. UN administrators are kept on the sidelines. Allied companies
are shut out of contracts.

The result is that the United States has the responsibility--and gets the
blame. And the American people will bear the cost, most likely without much
help. The administration asked for $75 billion as a down payment on the war.
It is likely to ask for the same amount as a down payment for reconstructing
Iraq.

That $75 billion will go to Iraq even as U.S. schools are laying off
teachers, cities are firing cops, states are cutting back on health clinics
and preschool programs. In the first Gulf War, the president's father
assembled a broad international alliance, gained the support of the Arab
nations and got the international community to pay for the war. The
administration got what it wished for: total control over Iraq. And now U.S.
taxpayers bear the burden, and the United States will bear the blame for
anything that goes wrong.

At home, the president got his tax cuts--the actual package created to
ensure that it is likely to cost not $350 billion but almost $1 trillion
over the next 10 years. Millionaires will pocket more than one-fourth of the
projected tax break.

No one doubts that movement conservatives have taken control; they dominate
the Republican Senate and the House and drive the administration's policies.

But to date, they have failed to demonstrate that they have the policies
that can deal with the challenges this country faces. Their tax cuts will
feed the staggering deficits. An editorial in the conservative Financial
Times calls it ''tax lunacy,'' saying that ''watching the world's economic
superpower slowly destroy perhaps the world's most enviable fiscal position
is something to behold.''

''Shock and awe'' in Iraq, from what we have seen, is generating more
terrorist threats against the United States, not fewer. Now the
administration warns that al-Qaida has ''reconstituted'' itself and poses a
renewed threat of terror in the United States.

The right-wing judges packing the courts are intent on rolling back
affirmative action, revoking women's right to choose, and crippling the
government's ability to regulate corporations to protect citizens, workers
or the environment. The polluters in charge of the environmental agencies
are intent on rolling back regulation, allowing companies to mine wilderness
areas and ignoring global warming.

This is a bold administration with bold plans. It has the power. But to
date, its policies seem to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.


OLD IRAQI ORDER

http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/international/ap_mostwanted05212003.htm

*  LIST OF IRAQI LEADERS IN U.S. CUSTODY
Reuters, 21st May

LONDON - The U.S. military said Ugla Abid Sighar al-Kubeiysi, a former
member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who is on Washington's list of
most-wanted Iraqis, was in the custody of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The number of people on the list known to have surrendered or been captured
is now 24.

Following is a list of those so far reported in custody:

April 12 - AMER HAMMOUDI AL-SAADI - Saddam's top scientific adviser, who
liaised with U.N. weapons inspectors, surrendered after learning he was No.
32 on the list.

April 13 - WATBAN IBRAHIM HASAN AL-TIKRITI - Saddam's half-brother was
turned over to the U.S. military. Saddam removed him as interior minister in
1995 but he remained a presidential adviser. Watban was No. 37 on the list.

April 17 - BARZAN IBRAHIM HASAN AL-TIKRITI - Saddam's half-brother was
captured by U.S. special forces in Baghdad. Barzan ran Iraq's intelligence
service from 1979 to 1983 and was Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in
Geneva from 1988 to 1997. He was No. 38.

April 17 - SAMIR ABDULAZIZ AL-NAJIM - The Baath Party regional command
chairman for east Baghdad, and No. 42 on the U.S. most-wanted list. He was
handed over to U.S.-led forces by Iraqi Kurds near Mosul.

April 19 - HIKMAT IBRAHIM AL-AZZAWI - Saddam's finance minister, also a
deputy prime minister, was taken into custody in Baghdad after being
captured by Iraqi police. He was No. 28.

April 19 - HUMAM ABDUL-KHALEQ ABDUL-GHAFUR - Saddam's minister of higher
education and scientific research, and No. 43 on the list, was taken into
custody by U.S.-led troops.

April 21 - JAMAL MUSTAFA SULTAN AL-TIKRITI - The Iraqi National Congress
said Jamal, No. 22 on the list, returned from Syria to surrender and was
handed to U.S. forces. The INC said Jamal served as Saddam's private
secretary until his overthrow. He was Saddam's only surviving son-in-law.

April 21 - MOHAMMED HAMZA AL-ZUBEIDI - The INC said this regional commander
and former Iraqi deputy prime minister, No. 9 on the list, was captured by
Free Iraqi Forces and handed over to U.S. custody.

April 23 - ZUHAYR TALIB ABD AL SATTAR AL NAQIB - This general who headed
military intelligence surrendered to U.S. forces in Baghdad. Naqib was No.
31 on the U.S. list.

April 23 - MUZAHIM SA'B HASSAN AL-TIKRITI - Air Defence Force commander and
No. 12 on the U.S. military's list.

April 23 - MOHAMMED MEHDI SALEH - Iraqi minister of trade, No. 35 on the
list.

April 24 - TAREQ AZIZ - Deputy prime minister and No. 25 on the U.S. list.
Aziz also played a starring diplomatic role during the 1991 Gulf War when he
was foreign minister.

April 26 - GENERAL HUSSAM MOHAMMED AMIN - Head of Iraq's National Monitoring
Directorate. He was No. 34 on the U.S. list. A U.S. military source said he
was caught at Ramadi, west of Baghdad on the road to Jordan and Syria.

April 28 - AMIR MUHAMMED RASHEED - Veteran oil minister surrendered. He ran
Iraq's military industries until becoming oil minister in 1995. He was No.
33 on the U.S. list. His wife is bioweapons scientist Rihab Taha, widely
known as ``Dr Germ.'' She is not on the list but it was announced on May 12
that she has been taken into custody.

April 29 - WALID HAMID TAWFIQ AL-TIKRITI - No. 26 on the U.S. list, he was
the governor of Basra province under Saddam. He gave himself up to the Iraqi
National Congress office in Baghdad.

May 2 - ABDUL TAWAB MULLAH HWAISH - Minister of military industrialisation
and No. 19 on the wanted list.

May 2 - TAHA MOHIEDDIN MA'ROUF - An Iraqi vice president and member of
Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, Hwaish was No. 24 on the wanted
list.

May 5 - HUDA SALIH MAHDI AMMASH - Designated as No. 39 on the wanted list,
Ammash is a biological weapons scientist involved in Saddam's weapons of
mass destruction programme. Known by U.S. intelligence as ``Mrs Anthrax,''
she was also identified as a Baath Party regional command member.

May 7 - GHAZI HAMUD AL-ADIB - No. 51 on the wanted list, al-Adib was the
Baath Party regional chairman and militia commander for the Wasit
governorate including the city of Kut.

May 12 - IBRAHIM AHMAD ABD AL SATTAR MUHAMMAD AL TIKRITI - No. 13 on the
list, is the former armed forces chief of staff.

May 13 - FADIL MAHMUD GHARIB - ranked No. 47 on the list, and a member of
Saddam's Baath Party regional command and chairman for the Babil district.
He is also known as Gharib Muhammad Fazel al-Mashaikh.

May 15 - ADIL ABDALLAH MAHDI AL-DURI AL-TIKRITI - Baath Party regional
chairman in the Dhi Qar Governorate, was seized in a raid near Tikrit. He is
ranked as No. 52 on the list.

May 17 - KAMAL MUSTAFA ABDALLAH SULTAN AL-TIKRITI - ranked No. 10, he was
one of Saddam Hussein's most trusted generals, the former secretary of the
feared Republican Guard.

May 20 - UGLA ABID SIGHAR AL-KUBEIYSI - Baath Party regional chairman in
Maysan governorate and No. 50 on the wanted list.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2777711

*  IRAQ MADE $2 BILLION A YEAR IN SANCTIONS-BUSTING
by Peg Mackey
Reuters, 20th May

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein raked in $2 billion a year in a
sanctions-busting ploy that kept the former Iraqi president in luxury and
the dilapidated oil sector alive, an Iraqi oil industry executive said
Tuesday.

In the eyes of the United States, Iraq was smuggling 280,000 barrels per day
(bpd) of crude oil to Syria and Turkey illegally to fill Saddam's coffers
and purchase components for banned weapons of mass destruction.

But for many in Iraq, the former Oil Minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed was
conducting "barter trade" outside United Nations supervision, helping to
generate cash to buy equipment for the country's cash-starved oil network,
the executive said.

"I considered it a patriotic duty to break the embargo. It was Amir
Rasheed's greatest achievement," the executive, who requested anonymity,
told Reuters. "Some of the money went to the presidential account to build
palaces and buy luxury cars for Saddam's cronies. But the remainder was used
for medicine, spare parts and equipment."

Payment to Baghdad was made in cash and in kind. Goods made up about 70
percent of the invoice, and the rest was paid in hard cash, some $600
million a year.

"In local terms, that's a lot of money," he said. Iraq sold most of its oil
under U.N. control via the oil-for-food program, but Baghdad managed to
break out of the sanctions straitjacket.

Its most daring bid to gain control over oil revenues was made two years ago
when it started to ship 180,000 bpd of oil to Damascus via the Iraq-Syria
pipeline, an arrangement which netted about $1 billion a year, the executive
said.

A pumping station on the pipeline was targeted by U.S. bombers in the early
days of the war to cut off the flow to Syria.

The deals with Iraq's neighbors -- led by Rasheed and carried out by the
rank and file -- reaped benefits for all. Syria and Turkey got cheap oil,
while Iraq got cash and goods while living under a stringent economic
embargo.

"Syria's economy started to boom thanks to Iraq," said the executive. "Let
us see what happens when Iraq's economic motor has stopped."

Iraq sold its crude to Damascus and Ankara at a steep discount versus the
international market. The formula was the declared price of oil at Turkey's
Ceyhan outlet for Iraqi crude, minus a hefty discount of $7 a barrel, the
source said.

Syria paid for half the oil in manufactured goods and the remainder went
into Iraqi bank accounts in Syria. "Thanks to this trade we were getting
most of the contracts that were not approved by the U.N. sanctions
committee, vital spare parts for the refineries, chemicals and spare parts,"
said the oil executive.

The Turkish deal was tighter in terms of the cash component, which was only
30 percent, he said. Some 80,000 bpd of crude and some quantities of fuel
oil netted Iraq close to $1 billion a year from Turkey, he said.

Iraq was also exporting fuel oil out of the Gulf at the cheap rate of about
$50 a ton.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,961660,00.html

*  US CAPTURES 'KING OF DIAMONDS'
The Guardian, 23rd May

The eighth most wanted person on the US central command's list of Iraqi
fugitives has been captured, it was announced today.

Aziz Sajih al-Numan, a former senior Ba'ath party leader, was taken into
custody yesterday and is the highest-ranking person on the 55-strong list to
have been captured. So far, 25 people from the list are in coalition
custody, according to the Pentagon.

Numan was the king of diamonds in the pack of playing cards distributed by
the US in Iraq featuring its most wanted figures from the deposed regime.

A brief central command statement said Aziz Sajih al-Numan "is now in
custody of coalition forces" having been arrested near Baghdad.

He was identified as the Ba'ath party's regional command chairman
responsible for west Baghdad. He also is a former governor of Karbala and
Najaf, according to the central command statement.

Numan was army commander during the 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait, and is
said to have personally overseen the summary execution of those who took
part in the Shia uprising after the first Gulf war.

Until now, the highest ranking Iraqi to have been captured was Muhammad
Hamza a Zubaydi, the former deputy prime minister and former Ba'ath party
regional command member. He was caught on April 20.

On Tuesday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,
announced the surrender of Uglah Abid Saqir al-Kubaysi, No 50 on the list.
Gen Myers said al-Kubaysi turned himself in on Monday. He was a leader of
the Ba'ath party in the Maysan region of south-eastern Iraq.

Other members of the deposed regime earning the diamond suit in the US's
most wanted deck of cards were Ali Hassan Majeed, the key presidential
adviser who got the nickname "Chemical Ali" for using weapons against
Iranians and Kurds; Hani Abd Latif Tilfah al Tikriti, a director of the
special security organization; and Izzat Ibrahim Duri, a party vice
chairman.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=409090

*  US ARMY CHIEF SAYS IRAQI TROOPS TOOK BRIBES TO SURRENDER
by Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, 24th May

Senior Iraqi officers who commanded troops crucial to the defence of key
Iraqi cities were bribed not to fight by American special forces, the US
general in charge of the war has confirmed.

Well before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence
agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was
deemed important to a swift, low casualty victory.

General Tommy Franks, the US army commander for the war, said these Iraqi
officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi
leader, Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters. As a result,
many officers chose not to defend their positions as American and British
forces pushed north from Kuwait.

"I had letters from Iraqi generals saying: 'I now work for you'," General
Franks said.

It is not clear which Iraqi officers were bribed, how many were bought off
or at what cost. It is likely, however, that the US focused on officers in
control of Saddam's elite forces, which were expected to defend the capital.
The Pentagon said that bribing the senior officers was a cost-effective
method of fighting and one that led to fewer casualties.

"What is the effect you want?" a senior Pentagon official said. "How much
does a cruise missile cost? Between $1m and $2.5m. Well, a bribe is a PGM
[precision guided missile) - it achieves the aim but it's bloodless and
there's zero collateral damage.

"This part of the operation was as important as the shooting part; maybe
more important. We knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty
and patriotism, and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we
knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he
added.

The revelation by General Franks, who this week announced his intention to
retire as commander of US Central Command, helps explain one of the enduring
mysteries of the US led war against Iraq: why Iraqi forces did not make a
greater stand in their defence of Baghdad, in many cases melting away and
changing into civilian clothes rather than forcing the allied troops to
engage in bitter, street-to-street fighting.

John Pike, director of the Washington-based military research group,
GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "It certainly strikes me that this is part of the
mix. I don't think there is any way of discerning how big a part of the mix
it is ... but it is part of the long queue of very interesting questions for
which we do not yet have definitive answers." In the run-up to the war
against Iraq, the Pentagon revealed its ambitious efforts to try to
encourage Iraqi soldiers and officers to lay down their weapons rather than
stand and fight.

As American and British troops massed in northern Kuwait in preparation,
millions of leaflets printed in Arabic were dropped over towns and cities
where troops were thought to be concentrated, urging them not to support
Saddam. The leaflets gave specific instructions as to how the troops should
surrender and included such information as ensuring that all tanks turrets
were turned around and pointed towards the north. Senior officers were also
targeted by US psy-ops officers using e-mails and telephone calls to their
private addresses and mobile phones.

As a result, while some Iraqi forces - especially those supported by
militias - put up staunch resistance in several cities as Allied forces
marched north, many thousands of Iraqi soldiers chose not to fight, in most
cases simply throwing off their uniforms and going home to their families.

But the confirmation - revealed in the current edition of Defence News by
reporter Vago Muradian - that crucial senior officers were bribed, would
explain why there was so little resistance in locations where it was
anticipated that better-trained troops such as the Republican Guard would
make a stand.

Some of the techniques employed by the Pentagon to persuade Iraqi troops not
to fight were used with some success in the recent war in Afghanistan, where
US special forces carried with them considerable sums of money in dollar
bills to buy off warlords whose support was deemed crucial to the war
effort.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/23/1053585696870.html

*  DOCTORS TELL HOW CHILDREN'S DEATHS BECAME PROPAGANDA
by Matthew McAllester in Baghdad
Sydney Morning Herald, 24th May

Throughout the 13 years of United Nations sanctions on Iraq that were ended
on Thursday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole
cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr Ghassam Rashid al-Baya said on
May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn al-Baladi Hospital, just after a dehydrated
baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on
Iraq."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of articles by reporters who were always
escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.

Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn
al-Baladi, tell a very different story.

Along with parents of dead children, they said this week that Saddam turned
the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save
babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.

All the evidence is that the spike in children's deaths was tragically real
- roughly, a doubling of the mortality rate during the 1990s, humanitarian
organisations estimate. But the reason has been fiercely argued, and new
accounts by Iraqi doctors and parents will alter the debate.

Under the sanctions regime, "we had the ability to get all the drugs we
needed", said Ibn al Baladi's chief resident, Dr Hussein Shihab. "Instead of
that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all
the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much,
because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we
can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

Washington and others have long blamed Saddam's spending habits for the poor
health of Iraqis. For years, the Iraqi government, some Western officials
and the anti-sanctions movement said UN restrictions on Iraqi imports and
exports were at fault.

Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues
until the authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly
parades in small coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi
state television and visiting journalists.

The parents were ordered to wail with grief - no matter how many weeks had
passed since their babies had died - and to shout to the cameras that the
sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterwards, the
parents would be rewarded with food or money.

"I am one of the doctors who was forced to tell something wrong, that these
children died from the fault of the UN," Dr Shihab said, sitting in his
hospital's staff room with his deputy, another doctor and one of the
hospital's administrators.

"But I am afraid if I tell the true thing . . ." Dr Shihab paused. Using the
present tense in English to describe the prewar past, he continued: "They
will kill me. Me and my family and my uncle and my aunt - everyone."

The last baby parade involving Ibn al-Baladi was in 2001, said Kamal
Khadoum, a hospital administrator. He did not know why the practice was
stopped.


http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/may/27/27052003ap.htm

*  IRAQI OFFICERS THREATEN PROTESTS, SUICIDE ATTACKS AGAINST US
Bangladeshi Independent, from AFP, 27th May

[.....]

Former Iraqi regime officials, meanwhile, said the sudden fall of Baghdad on
April 9 was the result of acts of betrayal by three of president Saddam
Hussein 's cousins, senior military officers, and a former cabinet minister.

According to the officials, Saddam's cousins ordered troops not to fight
against the US-led coalition and issued reports saying that the Iraqi leader
was dead.

"The head of the Republican Guard Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, who was
considered the shadow of Saddam, told the troops not to fight when US forces
entered Baghdad on April 8," one of the sources said on condition of
anonymity.

At the same time a rumour that Saddam was killed in the bombing of the
Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Mansur on April 7 began to spread among
government members.

The information was spread by a cabinet minister, the source said, refusing
to identify him. "This minister was then evacuated by American troops along
with his family and now lives in a European country."

And since the war, Saddam's elder son Uday has tried to contact US
occupation officials in Baghdad through an intermediary to negotiate a safe
surrender, Time magazine reported in its latest edition.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, paid its first
visit to prisoners held by the coalition in the Baghdad region, including
many from the most-wanted list of 55 former Iraqi leaders.


http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2816880

*  IRAQ STASHED ILLEGAL BILLIONS ABROAD, SAY BANKERS
by Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Reuters, 26th May

BAGHDAD: Iraq illegally stashed away billions of dollars in cash from oil
deals with foreign firms in Lebanese and Jordanian banks and some of the
money is still there, senior Iraqi and Arab bankers said.

The government transferred most of the cash it received from companies,
including possibly Western firms, to Baghdad where it was feared lost in the
looting that erupted after U.S.-led forces toppled president Saddam Hussein
last month.

But Iraqi government accounts still have at least $500 million in Lebanon
and significantly more in Jordan while other funds are now beyond recovery
in private hands, said the bankers, some of whom represented Iraq in dealing
with foreign banks.

Iraq was under United Nations sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait
until they were lifted last week. A 1996 agreement allowed it to sell oil in
exchange for food and essential supplies, not cash.

"Saddam Hussein could not run Iraq without cash," a senior Iraqi banker
said. "Iraq asked foreign companies to give it cash on top of the goods
bought under the oil for food deal. We were not getting a penny from selling
oil."

A sanctions committee dominated by the United States and Britain paid the
companies supplying Baghdad from the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales.

The bankers said the foreign companies that won contracts under the
so-called oil-for-food program may have paid 10 percent of the contract
value in cash to Jordanian and Lebanese accounts.

An Iraqi bank executive gave an example of a U.N.-approved $100 million
contract signed by Iraq to buy food.

"The company that wins the contract would send Iraq food for $75 million and
put another $10 million or more in the Jordanian or Lebanese bank account.
It would also make cash profit for itself," he said.

German, British, French and American companies may have been involved in
such deals, he said.

"The accounts I know of in Lebanon are in the name of Iraqi ministries. The
Iraqi government publicly requested the 10 percent," the banker said.

"In the best of times total Iraqi government deposits in Lebanese private
banks was less than $1 billion. Jordan had significantly more."

Jordan froze Iraq's public accounts at the start of the U.S.-led war but a
Jordanian banker said Iraq relied on individuals and companies to receive
the cash.

"The chaos of the war means that cash belonging to Iraq ended in private
hands and could never be traced," he said.

Iraqi bankers said the Iraqi government stepped up withdrawals from Lebanon
and Jordan after the United States pressed the two countries to crack down
on money laundering last year.

The bankers said Saddam's son Qusay did not steal money from the central
bank before the war as some media reports suggested.

They said Iraq's finance minister and officials of the now ousted Ba'ath
party, acting on Saddam's orders, moved around $1 billion and an unknown
amount of gold from the central bank just before the U.S.-led invasion began
on March 20.

They stashed the money away for safekeeping in and around Baghdad, including
at least $400 million in two government bank branches that were looted.




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