Volume CCXXXV, Number 70 March 18, 2005
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Good Morning, Worcester, it's your colorful |
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New Poll : We're Worcester's favorite snack: Twinkies or Ring-Dings? Vote toll free! 25 cents |
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REAGAN DECLARES LEBANON
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Lebanon invasion:
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WASHINGTON, D.C. March 17 – Moving boldly across the tangled checkerboard of international geopolitics [How can a checkerboard be tangled? – Copy Ed.][Shut up, he's a White House correspondent – Ed.], President Ronald Reagan declared that the United States had struck another decisive blow for freedom and against world Communism and terrorism. Reagan asserted his deployment of U.S. Marines to Lebanon had freed that unfortunate land and ensured the survival of a stable Lebanese democracy. In the words of State Department Policy Planning Director Paul Wolfowitz: "We have triumphed over Communism and terrorism and it hasn't cost us a thing." According to administration insiders, Reagan, known for his unshakable optimism that the U.S. can spread democracy around the world, believes that recent events vindicated his decision to send in the Marines. "Our brave Marines and our stalwart Israeli allies have freed Lebanon from the tyranny of PLO terror," Reagan told a crowd of admiring toadies at a Palm Springs fund raiser. Said the charismatic Commander-in-Chief: "In the words of that great American, Douglas MacArthur, Lebanon, we are here." Reagan is known to believe that the liberation of Lebanon will quickly lead to the spread of democracy in other Middle Eastern states including Iraq and Iran. Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger has ordered the Pentagon to print up several hundred thousand "It's morning in Beirut" banners for nonpartisan display on U.S. military bases. A few captious Democrats have questioned the decision to place U.S. forces on the violent fault line of Lebanese ethnic and religious strife. Others have muttered that any association with Ariel Sharon, who failed to protect Palestinian refugees from massacre at Sabra and Shatila, would not be viewed favorably by the Arab man in the street. But special envoy Donald Rumsfeld dismissed such criticisms as partisan. "Has President Reagan boldly struck a blow for freedom and against terrorism? Yes. Could anything go wrong? Of course not. What happens if several hundred Marines are massacred because we failed to protect them? We'll just invade somewhere else!" ADV'T. BEANO TONITE at Our Lady Help of Christians, Newton. Boys entered [Surely enter? – Ed.] free. Rev. Paul Shanley, Master of Ceremonies |
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WHY WE FIGHT, YEAR 3 Torture in Iraq Still
Routine, Report Says By Doug Struck BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 -- Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization. Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday. Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi "appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights," the report concludes. A spokesman for Allawi declined to comment, Monday and said "I will put this report on the prime minister's desk tomorrow to see if he has any reaction." [As of March 24, I guess we're still waiting – Ed.] . . . . The report was based on interviews with 90 current and former detainees in Iraq conducted between July and October last year, many of them interviewed when they were brought to court for initial proceedings. Of those, 72 said they were "tortured or ill-treated," the report says. It recounts numerous individual cases of torture, and says the victims often had fresh scars or bruises. "I was beaten with cables and suspended by my hands tied behind my back," Dhia Fawzi Shaid, 30, a resident of Baghdad, told the human rights investigators, according to the report. "I saw young men there lying on the floor while police [stepped] on their heads with boots. It was worse than Saddam's regime." Another, identified in the report as Ali Rashid Abbadi, 21, said he was arrested by police after the bombing of a liquor store on July 11. "The police came and started hitting us," he told Human Rights Watch. "They shouted at us to confess. . . . We were blindfolded and our hands were tied behind our backs. They poured cold water over me and applied electric shocks to my genitals." Abbadi was later released by a judge for lack of evidence, the report says. . . . The Washington Post contacted several people whose cases were included in the report. They declined to speak to a reporter, saying they feared retaliation by police. "The majority of detainees . . . stated that torture and ill-treatment during the initial period was commonplace" in jails run by the Interior Ministry, the report says. The abuses included "routine beatings . . . using cables, [rubber] hosepipes and metal rods . . . kicking, slapping and punching, prolonged suspension from the wrists," as well as electric shocks to the genitals and long periods spent blindfolded and handcuffed. Hania Mufti, the Baghdad director of Human Rights Watch and chief author of the report, said she did not find examples of abuses that were on a par with the worst atrocities committed under Hussein's rule, such as mock executions, disfigurement with acid or sexual assaults on family members in front of prisoners. But in many other respects, she said, treatment of those swept up by police had changed little. . . . The report also says authorities made a mockery of legal safeguards. People said they were arrested without warrants and held without charges for days, weeks or months. Police officials ignored summonses from judges, and judges who became too demanding of authorities were removed from their jobs. "The message has not gone out from the government that torture will not be tolerated," Mufti said. And foreign advisers hired to assist the Iraqi police have failed to object, she said. – © 2005 The Washington Post Company |