NO WMD, JUSTIFICATIONS FOR WAR IN QUESTION
26 January 2004

David Kay, chief weapons inspector for the Iraq Survey Group, who recently left his post, reports there was no evidence to indicate the presence of any weapons of mass destruction, any stockpiles, or any competent programs to develop such weapons. Kay said evidence was found that indicated there had been programs in the past, but that it appeared that all the weapons had been destroyed, and that the programs were in disarray, and no production facilities existed. He said his research was significantly complicated by post-war security lapses, which allowed looting of government facilities, including military and industrial sites.

Pres. Bush cited the Kay report in his State of the Union address last week, saying that evidence of programs was found. It now appears that Kay's interpretation of the meaning of those words includes a time-relative caveat: the evidence pointed to programs that were no longer active or no longer a threat.

Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations into how and with what degree of intent unreliable or erroneous intelligence came to determine national defense policy. Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2004, has said that the Iraq War cannot be justified as a "humanitarian intervention". The report notes the "intervention" came too late to prevent the crimes charged (mass killings in 1988 and 1991). Instead, says HRW, a humanitarian intervention would be the use of military force to stop or prevent an imminent mass killing or campaign of brutality, such as actions in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, designed to quell and forestall ethnically motivated slaughter. [s]

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
30 January 2004

In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Levin cited Donald Rumsfeld as saying on 11 March 2003, one week before the war: "we know he continues to hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighborhoods." The issue is how statements of such certainty had been made when new revelations indicate there was no reliable intelligence on which to base irrefutable affirmations of WMD in Iraq. [Full Story]

REUTERS REPORTS 3 JOURNALISTS AMONG ABUSED IRAQIS
18 May 2004

The Reuters News Agency is reporting that 3 Iraqi journalists working for the agency were beaten and sexually abused when they were detained in January, while covering the story of a downed helicopter. The abuses occurred not at Abu Ghraib prison, but at the Volturno Forward Operating Base, near Fallujah. Reuters latest publication of the story is due to the fact that the Pentagon has not responded to requests for a review of an initial military report that found no torture had occurred (issued long before the Abu Ghraib photos had become public). [Full Story]

GENERAL KARPINSKI ALLEGES TORTURE ORDERED FROM TOP
15 June 2004

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski has told the press that she is being made a "convenient scapegoat" by compromised authorities. She alleged specifically that she was told, while in command at Abu Ghraib, that all prisoners should be treated like dogs. She says that Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, now in charge of Iraqi prisons, then in charge of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, told her that any hint that detainees were anything more than dogs would lead to breakdown of her authority. [Full Story]