BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – Nearly 400 Lebanese soldiers have deployed near the Syrian border after Lebanon demanded a militant Palestinian group hand over members who killed a Lebanese contractor, a security official said Wednesday.

The official said dozens of elite commandos supported by tanks are among the deployment, which started moving into place late Tuesday near the remote southeastern village of Helweh, a few miles from the Syrian border.

The pro-Syria Fatah Uprising group has a training base in Helweh and members of the group on Tuesday allegedly shot dead Mohammed Ismail, a civilian contractor working for the Lebanese army, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

Lebanese authorities are calling on the group to hand over those who killed the contractor, the official said.

But Fatah Uprising, one of several Damascus-based radical Palestinian factions with bases in Lebanon, has so far declined to turn any of its members over, claiming the group did not kill the contractor, the official added.

It was unclear if the Lebanese army plans to storm the militant group’s base, which is on the edge of the village of Helweh and just a half mile from the border with Syria.
guardian.co.uk

10/25/05 “WSW” — — The interior ministry of the pro-US government in Iraq is being directly accused of carrying out the murder of Sadoun Antar Nudsaif al-Janabi, a key defence lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others that began on October 19.

Janabi was seized from his office late in the evening on October 20 by as many as 10 men. Witnesses claim they were wearing police uniforms. Several hours later, Janabi’s body was found on the street near Baghdad’s Fardous Mosque. He had been killed execution-style with two gunshots to the head.

Hemeid Faraj al-Janabi, the sheik of the Al Janibiyeen tribe to which Janabi belonged, told the Arabic daily Al Hayat on Monday: “We have evidence from the interior ministry that the executors of the operation are from the ministry. They kidnapped Sadoun al-Janabi and took him to one of the ministry’s buildings in the Al Jaderiyah region—which is the house of the one of the daughters of the overthrown president—where they assassinated him.”

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a senior leader of the Shiite fundamentalist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Along with the Da’awa movement of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, SCIRI has worked closely with the US-led occupation forces since the 2003 invasion. Following the election last January, which gave the Shiite parties control of the government, many of SCIRI’s Badr Organisation militiamen have been incorporated into the interior ministry or the new Iraqi army.

There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government.
informationclearinghouse.info

Saddam’s defense team wants to put Bush on trial

With the continued quagmire in Iraq and the likely indictments of senior Bush administration officials for trying to shore up the shaky rationale for the invasion, one would think that things couldn’t get much worse for the administration. But where success has a thousand architects, failure leads to much finger pointing. The administration’s latest headache comes from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff. In a well-publicized recent speech before the New America Foundation, which I attended, Wilkerson lambasted the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” that got control of U.S. foreign policy from a president “not versed in international relations and not too much interested either.”

Wilkerson’s scathing remarks were designed to deflect criticism from his former boss. As one anti-war Republican Senate staff member told me, Wilkerson “summoned his courage about three years too late.” The typically politically correct, inside-the-beltway audience was too polite to ask why Powell and Wilkerson didn’t resign over the invasion of a foreign nation that they privately opposed.
commondreams.org

Wilkerson: The White House Cabal
In President Bush’s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

But it’s absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and “guardians of the turf.”

George Galloway is considering taking his fight with Senator Norm Coleman to the Republican’s heartland by booking a venue in Minnesota and challenging him to a debate.

Mr Coleman is chairman of a senate permanent sub-committee on investigations that yesterday accused Mr Galloway of lying under oath about Saddam Hussein’s multi-million pound oil-for food programme.

The senate investigation claimed Mr Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was granted eight oil allocations totalling 23 million barrels between 1999 and 2003. Mr Galloway said he had never received a penny in oil money.

Ron McKay, Mr Galloway’s assistant, said that a hall could be booked for Minnesota possibly for as early as next week. The two could fly to the US and challenge Senator Coleman to turn up for a debate.

Mr Galloway said that the debate was one of a number of options and a final decision had not been taken. “We want to take the fight to the enemy,” he said. He expressed little confidence that Mr Coleman would agree to such a debate.

Mr Galloway surprised Mr Coleman in May by flying to Washington to confront him directly in the senate over the oil allegations. Last month he flew to New York to debate Iraq with the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Mr Galloway described the senate’s report as “politically motivated”.

He also repeated his challenge to Mr Coleman to make his allegations outside the protection of the senate, to accuse him of perjury and let a court decide.

“I have no confidence that Coleman will charge me. That would require [Tariq] Aziz [the former Iraqi deputy prime minister being held in jail in Iraq and one of the senate committee’s alleged sources] and others appearing in court.” He said the senator would be “terrified of that”.

“If they say they are going to charge me I’ll head for the airport and I’m calling for them to do so, begging them to do so,” he said. “The charge against me in this sneak attack is that I lied under oath in front of the Senate when I went there in May and trounced this group of lickspittle pro-war Bushites. I am unequivocally stating here and now I’ll head for Heathrow now, pausing only to pick up my toothbrush, if they will promise to charge me with perjury. It is very clear what they said, I lied under oath. It is a criminal offence which is what they told me when I swore the oath. It is put up or shut up time. See you in court Senator Coleman.”
guardian.co.uk

Dick Cheney was thrust into the centre of the criminal investigation of an intelligence leak yesterday after details were reported of a White House meeting in which the vice-president discussed a CIA officer whose cover was blown a few weeks later.

The discussion two years ago between Mr Cheney and his top aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, would not represent a crime in itself, as both men have top security clearance. But the new revelations leave Mr Libby vulnerable to indictment for perjury or obstruction of justice. He is said to have testified to a grand jury that he heard about the CIA agent’s identity from journalists.

It is not known what Mr Cheney told a federal prosecutor investigating the leak, but if he failed to mention the reported meeting on June 12 2003, he could also be in danger of perjury or obstruction charges. The new report also conflicts with public remarks the vice-president made not long after the alleged White House meeting.
guardian.co.uk

Rep. Jerrold Nadler: Fitzgerald Must Broaden Investigation
“Did the Bush Administration deliberately mislead Congress about the war?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In light of recent developments in the CIA leak investigation and other recent revelations, Congressman Jerrold Nadler today called for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to expand his investigation to include a criminal investigation to examine whether the President, the Vice President, and members of the White House Iraq Group conspired to deliberately deceive Congress into authorizing the war in Iraq.

“The CIA leak issue is only the tip of the iceberg,” Congressman Nadler said. “This is looking increasingly like a White House conspiracy aimed at misleading our country into war – in part by manufacturing now-refuted evidence in support of its rationale, in part by smearing and silencing critics, and in part by manipulating media complicity. There is mounting evidence that there may have been a well-orchestrated effort by the President, the Vice President, and other top White House officials to lie to Congress in order to get its support for the Iraq War.”

It is a crime to lie to Congress under several federal statutes. Congressman Nadler requested that Special Counsel Fitzgerald follow the leads he has already discovered and broaden his investigation to include charges of lying to Congress. In his letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General McCallum asking for a broadening of Special Counsel Fitzgerald’s investigation, Nadler cited the President’s infamous reference to African Uranium in the 2003 State of the Union Address, reports of the White House Iraq Group’s singular mission to sell the war at all costs, assertions made in the “Downing Street Memo,” and reporters’ own accounts of media manipulation.

“Honest, if mistaken, reliance on faulty intelligence to convince Congress to authorize a war is bad enough,” Congressman Nadler wrote in his letter to McCallum. “But, if, as mounting evidence is tending to show, Administration officials deliberately deceived Congress and the American people, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy against the entire country.”

Italy’s intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced.
With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leak investigation, questions are again being raised about the intelligence scandal that led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House obtained false Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq had tried to buy uranium “yellowcake” from Niger.

The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt later turned out to be crude forgeries, created on official stationery stolen from the African nation’s Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents — and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy’s military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody.

The Senate defied a threatened presidential veto three weeks ago and passed legislation that would outlaw the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone held by the US. But the Washington Post and the New York Times, both quoting anonymous officials, said the vice-president, Dick Cheney, proposed a change so that the law would not apply to counter-terrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by “an element” of the US government other than the defence department.
guardian.co.uk

US detainees ‘murdered’ during interrogations
10/25/05 “Associated Press” — — Washington — At least 21 detainees who died while in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were the victims of homicide and usually died during or after interrogations, according to an analysis of Defence Department data.

The analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, released today, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterised 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or “blunt force injuries”, as noted in the autopsy reports.

The 44 deaths represent a partial group of the total number of prisoners who have died in US custody overseas; more than 100 have died of natural and violent causes.

In one case, the report said, a detainee died after being smothered during interrogation by military intelligence officers in November 2003. In another case cited by the report, a prisoner died of asphyxiation and blunt force injuries after he was left standing, shackled to the top of a door frame, with a gag in his mouth.

The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.

The bill also triples the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty, adding, among others, the material support law that has been the core of the government’s legal strategy against terrorism.
washingtonpost.com

US Judge Sets December Date to Execute Nobel Peace Prize Nominee
A US judge signed a death warrant for a former street gangster and convicted killer who went on to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in tackling youth violence.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders set a December 13 date for the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, noting that his appeal against his death sentence had been rejected by the US Supreme Court on October 11.

Gigantic oil companies generally do not enjoy the best PR.

Pick your poison: Oil companies have caused tanker spills, proposed drilling into the Arctic wildlife ranges, crafted ties to shady nations and meddled in the affairs of others, and produced products that pollute.

Now, even as high gasoline prices continue to anger motorists and aggravate financial problems at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the oil companies have begun to report record quarterly profit. Yesterday, British energy giant BP PLC reported a $6.53 billion third-quarter profit, up from $4.87 billion in the same period last year. And tomorrow, analysts expect Exxon Mobil Corp. to show that it earned nearly $9 billion over the past three months — the largest corporate quarterly profit ever.

Grumbling already has begun on Capitol Hill: Last month, one senator proposed a windfall-profit tax on oil conglomerates, and yesterday, House Republicans warned energy companies against price gouging.

To deflect the damage, the energy industry is relying on an ad campaign that was escalating even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blitzed Gulf Coast petroleum refineries. The print and television ads are designed to educate consumers and lawmakers with a “we’re all in this together” tone.

In the pages of The Washington Post, for example, according to the paper’s ad executives, BP has taken out seven large issue ads so far this year, compared with zero through the same time last year. Exxon Mobil has had 19 so far this year, compared with 12 last year. For Chevron Corp., it’s 17 ads so far this year, compared with six last year. And the industry’s trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has purchased seven ads in The Post so far this year, compared with none last year.
washingtonpost.com

The man believed to be the ringleader of the four London suicide bombers had extensive contacts with al-Qa’eda extremists and should have been intercepted by MI5, the BBC claimed last night.

A report said that a succession of intelligence failures had allowed Mohammad Sidique Khan, who detonated a device on a train at Edgware Road station on July 7, to “slip away” after briefly coming under scrutiny.

Khan, 30, from Dewsbury, West Yorks, was subject to a routine assessment by the security service because of an indirect connection to a suspect in an alleged terror plot in 2004.

The BBC claimed that he was secretly filmed and recorded speaking to the suspect. Khan was one of hundreds investigated but who was not judged a risk to warrant further surveillance.
telegraph.co.uk

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is abandoning its push to develop a “bunker-buster” nuclear warhead and instead will pursue a conventional weapon that can penetrate hardened underground targets.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Tuesday that lawmakers had agreed drop funding for the proposed nuclear bunker-buster from the Energy Department’s budget for the 12 months beginning Oct 1. He said the Energy Department had requested the move because it no longer planned to pursue a nuclear bunker-buster.

The decision was hailed by opponents of new nuclear weapons.
yahoo.com