The Raid...
by Riverbend

We were gathered in the living room and my aunt and her husband, Ammoo S. [Ammoo = uncle] were asleep. T., J. and I were speaking softly and looking for songs on the radio, having sworn not to sleep before the cake was all gone. T. was playing idly with her mobile phone, trying to send a message to a friend. “Hey- there’s no coverage here… is it just my phone?” She asked. J. and I both took out our phones and checked, “Mine isn’t working either…” J. answered, shaking her head. They both turned to me and I told them that I couldn’t get a signal either. J. suddenly looked alert and made a sort of “Uh-oh” sound as she remembered something. “R.- will you check the telephone next to you?” I picked up the ordinary telephone next to me and held my breath, waiting for a dial tone. Nothing. “There’s no dial tone… but there was one earlier today- I was online…” J. frowned and turned down the radio. “The last time this happened,” she said, “the area was raided.” The room was suddenly silent and we strained our ears. Nothing. I could hear a generator a couple of streets away, and I also heard the distant barking of a dog- but there was nothing out of the ordinary. T. suddenly sat up straight, “Do you hear that?” She asked, wide-eyed. At first I couldn’t hear anything and then I caught it- it was the sound of cars or vehicles- moving slowly. “I can hear it!” I called back to T., standing up and moving towards the window. I looked out into the darkness and couldn’t see anything beyond the dim glow of lamps behind windows here and there.

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Election Results...

I try not to dwell on the results too much- the fact that Shia religious fundamentalists are currently in power- because when I do, I’m filled with this sort of chill that leaves in its wake a feeling of quiet terror. It’s like when the electricity goes out suddenly and you’re plunged into a deep, quiet, almost tangible darkness- you try not to focus too intently on the subtle noises and movements around you because the unseen possibilities will drive you mad…

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George "Gen. Jack Ripper" Bush
by Juan Cole

Another leaked British memo ("everywhere you dig you find a body") reveals that Bush and Blair sat around on January 31, 2003, thinking up crazy schemes to provoke a war with Saddam since they didn't have any real casus belli. What is worse, the memo confirms that our genius president knew about the dangers of messing with Iraq's internal stability and did it anyway.

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Iraq Pre-War Intelligence

Good Electricity News from Iraq

"The basic problem with Qud[a]s is, we have four LM6000s out there that essentially don't have a fuel supply," says a U.S. power-generation engineer who did a yearlong tour in Iraq. "We installed a third of a billion dollars' worth of combustion turbines that can't be fueled." The LM6000 combustion turbines are a type known as aeroderivative. They are basically Boeing 747 turbines mounted on heavy stands. They work well on natural gas, but to run on diesel, they need high-quality fuel and a fair amount of operational sophistication, two things in short supply today in Iraq. "The first time I went to Quds and saw those LM6000s, the first words out of my mouth were, 'What the hell are those things doing here?'" says the generation specialist in Iraq.

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Abu Ghraib

  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

Abu Ghraib and Salon
By continuing to publish documentation of the abuse, we hope to shed light on a chapter in American history that this administration has tried to keep in the shadows.

For one Marine, torture came home

ABOUT A YEAR and a half ago, a 40-year-old former Marine sergeant named Jeffrey Lehner, recently returned from Afghanistan, phoned and asked to meet with me. Since his return he had been living with his father, a retired pharmacist, in the Santa Barbara home where he was raised. I first heard about Jeff from an acquaintance of mine who was dating him and who told me that he was deeply distressed about what he had seen on his tours in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.

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