Loose cannons

The fully sovereign Iraqi government

"Earlier Wednesday, Iraqi justice ministry officials said they would release scientist Rihab Rashid Taha on bail because she was no longer a threat to national security. 'I was told by my minister that she would be released. This was guaranteed', said Nuri Abdul al Rahim Ibrahim, a justice ministry spokesman. The Iraqi government also suggested that the other female prisoner, Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash ... would be released. But by midday, American [embassy] officials said they had custody of Taha and Ammash and that the women wouldn't be released soon." — Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 22.

And war is peace

"The rise in the number and ferocity of terrorist attacks by insurgents in Iraq is proof that they are getting weaker, not stronger, according to Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi." — New York Times, September 23.

The War on Terror

"Operations by US and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi health ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder." — Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 24.

Land of the free

"Modern-day slavery is alive and well in the United States, say the authors of a report on forced labor that was released Thursday. According to the report, Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States — which was conducted by researchers at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group in Washington, DC — at any given time, at least 10,000 people are forced to work against their will through threats or violence." — San Francisco Chronicle, September 24.

From Green Left Weekly, October 6, 2004.

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From GLW issue 601