Differing Perspectives

A few thought provoking articles that express many of the different perspectives on the current Iranian/UK crisis.




A peculiar outrage
Iran — how to start a war
A fake British map
Blair furious

Gone Fishin'

The latest animation from Mark Fiore.

Gone Fishin'

Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed

(From the BBC) A US court has dismissed a lawsuit against former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld over claims prisoners were tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court accepted that the nine men who sued had been tortured - and detailed the torture in its ruling.


But Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the five Iraqis and four Afghans did not have US constitutional rights, and also that Mr Rumsfeld was immune from such suits.

Two human rights groups brought the suit against him and three officers...

...In a ruling stretching to nearly 60 pages, the chief judge of the US district court for the District of Columbia said the allegations of torture were "horrifying".

The nine men suffered abuse including being:

hung upside-down and slapped until they lost consciousness
stabbed with knives
subjected to electric shocks
deprived of sleep by loud noises and bright lights
grabbed by aggressive dogs
They also were subjected to sexual humiliation.

None was ever charged with a crime.

All were released after detentions of one month to one year. Some were detained multiple times.

Read the full article at the Source

It seems that not having constitutional rights also prevents you from having human rights. You may expect this kind of abhorrent behaviour from a dictatorship but coming out of the 'land of liberty' makes this ruling especially disgusting.

Impeachment threat is real

The impeachment threat is real, argues The Nation's John Nichols.


"Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough had me on his MSNBC show Monday night to talk about impeachment,", "It was smart, civil discussion that treated the prospect of impeaching the president as a serious matter."


According to Nichols : " Scarborough is not jumping on the impeachment bandwagon", "He is simply treating the prospect seriously, as did CNN's Wolf Blitzer earlier in the day" , "We are nearing an impeachment moment."

"The Alberto Gonzales scandal, the under-covered but very real controversy involving abuses of the Patriot Act and the President's increasingly belligerent refusals to treat Congress as a co-equal branch of government are putting the discussion of presidential accountability onto the table from which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to remove it."

Read the full article here.

Lancet survey 'was robust' claims chief MOD adviser

From the BBC

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust"...

...The researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people. In nearly 92% of cases family members produced death certificates to support their answers. The survey estimated that 601,000 deaths were the result of violence, mostly gunfire...

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate.

He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report."

But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."...

...If the Lancet survey is right, then 2.5% of the Iraqi population - an average of more than 500 people a day - have been killed since the start of the war...

Read the full article here.

Tony Benn Beats Bolton To A Pulp

A five minute video of John Bolton coming up against Tony Benn in the most recent edition of the BBC political debate programme Question Time.

Here

You can watch the entire programme here.