Jordanian officials say the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, may have been behind three blasts at landmark hotels in the capital Amman.

Up to 70 people were killed and about 300 wounded in the attacks.

Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher says Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, is a prime suspect in the Amman bombings.

Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for an attack aimed at two US warships in Jordan in August and Zarqawi was born in Jordan.

The Jordanian Government is also struggling to contain militants not directly linked to Zarqawi.

Previous plots to launch chemical and bomb attacks have not involved his group and numerous cells made up of Jordanians and foreigners from elsewhere in the Middle East have been active in the country.

Wedding victims

Meanwhile, many of the victims were Jordanians attending a wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS hotel.

Ahraf Al Khaled was the man getting married.

"We tried to save how many we can, but there's a lot of people injured and some of them dead," he said.

"Some of them are from my family and some are from my wife's family as well.

"Myself, I lost my father, I lost my father-in-law as well."

A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.

The Foreign Ministry stated Wednesday that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts. Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were in contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit Wednesday.[...]

The Pentagon has always admitted it used phosphorus during last year's assault on the city, which US commanders said was an insurgent stronghold. But they claimed they used the brightly burning shells "very sparingly" and only to illuminate combat areas.

But the documentary Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, broadcast yesterday by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, suggested the shells were commonly used and killed an unspecified number of civilians. Photographs obtained by RAI from the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, show the bodies of dozens of Fallujah residents whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised by the effects of the phosphorus shells. The use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by treaty.

Last night Robert Musil, director of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, called for an investigation. He told The Independent: "When there is clear testimony that use of such weapons has done this, it demands a full investigation. From Vietnam onwards there has been a general condemnation of [the use of white phosphorus] and concern about the injuries and consequences."

The 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons bans the use of weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus against civilian - but not military - targets. The US did not sign the treaty and has continued to use white phosphorus and an updated version of napalm, called Mark 77 firebombs, which use kerosene rather than petrol. A senior US commander previously has confirmed that 510lb napalm bombs had been used in Iraq and said that "the generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

John Pike, director of the Washington-based military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said the smoke caused by the bombs could confuse or blind the enemy or mark a target. "If it hits your clothes it will burn your clothes and if it hits your skin it will just keep on burning," he said.

Experts said that, if not removed, white phosphorus - known as Willy Pete - can burn to the bone. The fumes from phosphorus cause severe eye irritation.

On November 8, 10,000 US troops, supported by 2,000 Iraqi recruits, equipped with artillery and tanks, supported from the air by bombers and helicopter gunships, blasted their way into a city the size of Leicester. It took a week to establish control of the main roads; another two before victory was claimed.

The city's main hospital was selected as the first target, the New York Times reported, "because the US military believed it was the source of rumours about heavy casualties". An AP photographer described US helicopters killing a family of five trying to ford a river to safety. "There were American snipers on top of the hospital shooting everyone," said Burhan Fasa'am, a photographer with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. "With no medical supplies, people died from their wounds. Everyone in the street was a target for the Americans."

The US also deployed incendiary weapons, including white phosphorous. "Usually we keep the gloves on," Captain Erik Krivda said, but "for this operation, we took the gloves off". By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines.

The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in only one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians - a proportionately higher death rate than in Coventry and London during the blitz.

The collective punishment inflicted on Falluja - with logistical and political support from Britain - was largely masked by the US and British media, which relied on reporters embedded with US troops. The BBC, in particular, offered a sanitised version of the assault: civilian suffering was minimised and the ethics and strategic logic of the attack largely unscrutinised.

Falluja proved to be yet another of the war's phantom turning points. Violent resistance spread to other cities. In the last two months, Tal-Afar, Haditha, Husaybah - all alleged terrorist havens heavily populated by civilians - have come under the hammer. Falluja is still so heavily patrolled that visitors have described it as "a giant prison". Only a fraction of the promised reconstruction and compensation has materialised.

Like Jallianwallah Bagh, Guernica, My Lai, Halabja and Grozny, Falluja is a place name that has become a symbol of unconscionable brutality. As the war in Iraq claims more lives, we need to ensure that this atrocity - so recent, so easily erased from public memory - is recognised as an example of the barbarism of nations that call themselves civilised.

· Mike Marqusee is a co-founder of Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk

I have never recommended a book as strongly as I am recommending Neoconned and Neoconned Again, two new collections of essays that make just about every argument you can think of against the war in Iraq. Now if you’re thinking that you’ve read enough about this subject already, or that such books just aren’t your cup of tea, or that you have too much to read as it is, I urge you to abandon such thoughts right away. These books need to be purchased by everyone, right away, this minute, and need to be circulated just as far as possible.

I was asked early last year to contribute an essay to these volumes. At that time I was consumed by the task of writing The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, along with my usual dozen other projects, and unfortunately had to decline. All I can say is, they sure didn’t need my essay. Light in the Darkness Publications has assembled one of the most impressive lineups of scholars and commentators I have ever seen on any subject. Many of the names will be familiar to LRC readers; see the list for volume 1 here and volume 2 here.

Worth the price of the two volumes alone is the very lengthy interview with the late, great Jude Wanniski, the supply-side theorist who had such influence on President Ronald Reagan (and who therefore cannot be dismissed so easily as a leftist peacenik). In recent years Wanniski had become – along with all too few other conservatives – skeptical not only of government intervention on the domestic front but of its foreign interventions as well. (Recall Joe Sobran’s amusing dictum: if you want the government to intervene domestically you’re a liberal, if you want the government to intervene abroad you’re a conservative, if you want the government to intervene both domestically and abroad you’re a moderate, and if you don’t want the government to intervene either domestically or abroad you’re an extremist.)

It may sound like an exaggeration to say that just about every major claim made about Iraq and Saddam by the U.S. government since the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has been misleading or simply false, and that the mainstream media has bought into these distortions with nary a peep of opposition, but that’s just about the only conclusion one can draw from Wanniski’s case. If you think it’s an open and shut case that Saddam "gassed his own people," not to mention countless other episodes routinely cited to work us into a frenzy for war, you need to read this. (Saddam did brutally suppress uprisings against his regime, but violence in the service of nationalism seems to disturb the neoconservative conscience only selectively – China and Iraq bad, Russia and the United States [under Lincoln] good.)

Although not every essay touches on the issue explicitly, the first of the two volumes is organized around Catholic just-war theory and what it has to say about the war in Iraq. Now hold on a minute before you say you’re non-Catholic and just move along. The principles of Catholic just-war theory, long appropriated and developed by a great many non-Catholics, are widely regarded as useful tools for moral reflection, and you’ll be surprised at just how satisfying it is to see how dramatically short the war in Iraq falls on the basis of every one of those principles.

Wanniski also reminds us of the real history of the past 15 years. He recalls the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, including the deliberate targeting of water treatment facilities (followed by a sanctions regime that forbade the entry into Iraq of equipment needed to repair them) and other installations vital to civilian life. This was all necessary, say the shills, because Saddam was such a bad person. The sanctions, too, which led to half a million children dead – "worth it," according to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who did not question that figure – were routinely defended on the same grounds. (Wanniski also addresses the "if Saddam hadn’t built so many palaces he could have fed his people" argument.) A prosperous, secular country that was liberal by regional standards, and which could boast one of the finest health care systems in the Middle East, was reduced to an economic basket case, and plagued by a nightmare of disease, malnourishment, and sick and deformed children – all as the result of a vain effort to dislodge its leader. If the "Saddam was bad" defense strikes you as insufficient to justify the infliction of this degree of suffering – of which this is the tip of the iceberg – welcome to the human race.

That people who describe themselves as Christians supported this policy is but the icing on the cake. As I recall, there was a Christian theologian of no small importance who condemned the idea that we should "do evil that good may come."

A surprising contributor to these volumes is Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who headed what in his day was known as the Holy Office of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Ottaviani was known for his outspoken opposition to the new rite of Mass, which he considered an intolerable liberal innovation, so it would not be easy to accuse him of "liberalism." And yet the editors include for us a wonderful and compelling essay of his called "Modern War Is to Be Absolutely Forbidden." Let’s see pro-war Catholics wiggle out of this one.

Professor Peter Chojnowski, another traditional Catholic, contributes a surprisingly radical essay on the right of conscientious objection. He reminds us of an important statement by the Ethics Committee of the Catholic Association for International Peace six decades ago. That committee included distinguished and orthodox scholars such as Msgr. Fulton Sheen (who wrote scholarly books early in his career) and Msgr. John A. Ryan. It concluded:

Practically speaking, the task of deciding the justice or injustice of any particular war devolves upon the conscience of the individual conscript or soldier. It is his conscientious duty to decide, as a matter of concrete fact, whether any particular war is aggressive or defensive, and, if defensive, whether it is justified or unjustified, and, in consequence, whether he is free or obliged or forbidden to participate formally in it, whether he is free or obliged or forbidden to be a conscientious objector.

That’s another small taste of the hidden history that these books have made available.

Volume 2 is, if anything, more impressive still, and features a wider variety of ideological perspectives. No, I don’t much care for some of what Noam Chomsky says, but I am prepared to give a respectful hearing to anyone with the intelligence and the strength of character to denounce wickedness and folly, especially this particular case of wickedness and folly. Featuring an introduction by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, volume 2 includes dozens of essays by such authors as Claes Ryn, Kirkpatrick Sale, Alexander Cockburn, Gordon Prather, Mark and Louise Zwick, Justin Raimondo, Robert Fisk, and Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.

Like many Americans, I’ve grown sad and frustrated at the triumph of neoconservative foreign policy. It was sold to Americans not merely on the basis of lies, but also by means of bumper-sticker slogans trotted out – and dutifully absorbed and repeated by shills determined to live down to every caricature of conservatism ever devised – by a White House that cynically exploited ordinary people’s patriotic inclinations in order to prosecute a war whose aims remain obscure to this day.

These books, a small victory in themselves, actually lifted my spirits. It was a great pleasure to see how many serious, intelligent observers were keeping a watchful eye on the Bush administration well before criticism of the Iraq misadventure became fashionable, and to see their case against it laid out with such devastating precision. That case is so powerful and overwhelming that it will leave you more dumbfounded than ever that anyone ever fell for it, that anyone got away with denouncing skeptics of transparent White House propaganda as "unpatriotic," or that so many people believe conservatism involves no higher value than giving intellectual cover to a series of ever-changing, ad hoc rationalizations for war.

These books deserve to become bestsellers. To those who opposed the Iraq war, think of purchasing these books as casting a vote against the War Party, against the war-war choice of Bush/Kerry that we got in 2004, and against a cowardly, servile mainstream media whose mea culpas about pre-war intelligence came, well, rather too late.

If you have friends on the left or the right, or even in the center for that matter, please forward this column to them. The same supposedly "liberal" media that brazenly repeated White House fabrications that a simple Google search could have refuted are unlikely to showcase these books. (Can someone please remind the major conservative publications that the "liberal" media supported this war with a vengeance?) They belong not only in Americans’ homes but also in classrooms, libraries (buy a set and donate it!), and wherever intelligent Americans may be found.

Ordinary Americans who were too busy with their own lives to investigate the administration’s claims too closely may come to see they’ve been had, if they haven’t realized it already. But the most outspoken of the war’s supporters are all but impossible to persuade. Some of them are simply venal, eager to curry favor with the regime no matter how idiotic or intellectually insulting the line they are expected to tow. Others, whether they realize it or not, look at the world as a giant baseball game, with the U.S. government as our team. They’ll rush out of the dugout to protest an obviously sound call at first base or a called strike that was in fact well within the strike zone. When in matters of foreign policy their team sets forth a barrage of propaganda they would have laughed at had it come from the Soviet Union in the 1980s or Syria today, they cannot defend it enthusiastically enough. Go, team.

Such a juvenile mentality would have been considered utterly beneath conservatism in, say, the 1940s. At that time, you could find major conservatives who were willing to hold their own government to the same moral standards they applied to others. Even a man known as "Mr. Republican," Senator Robert Taft, could cast a skeptical eye on the Truman administration’s early Cold War foreign policy as – no, this isn’t a misprint – gratuitously provocative.

Today, even to look for motivations behind 9/11 is to invite accusations of "blaming America" for the attacks, as if a detective seeking a killer’s motive should be accused of blaming the victim for his fate. It is next to impossible to render serious judgments about foreign policy when public discourse is dominated by anti-intellectual hysterics calling themselves patriots. These two books do the best job yet.

It may be worth noting, if only in order to underscore the intensity of my feelings about these volumes, that not only do I have no relationship to Light in the Darkness Publications, an imprint of IHS Press (no relation to the Institute for Humane Studies), but I have actually had some public and contentious exchanges with J. Forrest Sharpe, one of the editors of Neoconned, on unrelated matters. I am happy to let bygones be bygones. Sharpe has done his country and the cause of truth a valuable service and deserves only the most enthusiastic support.

It is not possible to do these books justice in a single column. All I can say is that they are of the utmost importance. I cannot urge readers of this column strongly enough: put aside any inclination you may have to let these volumes pass you by, or even to put off buying them until a later date. Buy them right now. You will not regret it.

Many Americans believe the governments of the United States and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to justify military action, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 43 per cent of respondents believe both administrations lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq.

Conversely, 41 per cent of respondents think the U.S. and Britain were themselves misinformed by bad intelligence, five per cent think weapons of mass destruction might still be found in Iraq, and 11 per cent do not know.

The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,056 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 15,300 troops have been injured.

Pre-war speeches by U.S. president George W. Bush mentioned specific chemical agents, such as mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve gas as banned substances allegedly secured by Iraq. State secretary Colin Powell assured the United Nations (UN) Security Council in February 2003 that Hussein possessed biological weapons.

The final report of the Iraq Survey Group—presented to the U.S. Congress on Sept. 30, 2004—concluded that Hussein’s regime did not possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and had not implemented a significant program for their development.

Among those respondents who think the U.S. and Britain lied before the invasion of Iraq, 24 per cent say the two governments chose to focus only on the intelligence that supported military action, while 17 per cent believe they knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Polling Data

Before the war, the U.S. and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been found. Why do you think they made this claim?

Mostly because they were themselves misinformed by bad intelligence 41%

Mostly because they lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq 43%

WMD might still be found 5%

Don’t know / Refused 11%

(Among the 43% who said "lied") - Do you think U.S. and British leaders knew Iraq had no weapons, or did they simply choose to believe only the intelligence that supported going to war?

Chose to believe only the intelligence that supported going to war 24%

Knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction 17%

Don’t know / Refused 2%

Source: Princeton Survey Research Associates / Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,201 American adults, conducted from Nov. 3 to Nov. 6, 2005. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent.

Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately, Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year timeline of those warnings.

2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies

In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.

OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98]

FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]

SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]

SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]

2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case

Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.

JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NOT PROVIDED WMD TO TERRORISTS: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02]

APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02]

SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]

OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03]

OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003]

OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03]

2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings

Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.

LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]

JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]

FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03]

FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03]

FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03]

MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]

MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq . A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups. This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, 'cherry-picked the intelligence stream' in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ]

JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED: "The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters, 6/6/03]

The Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, has opened an inquiry into reports of secret CIA detention centres in Romania and Poland, the European commission said yesterday.

It follows a Washington Post report this month which said the intelligence agency has been interrogating al-Qaida captives in eastern Europe.

The CIA has also taken the first step toward a criminal investigation of the leak, possibly of classified information, on which the newspaper based its report, a US official said yesterday. The agency has sent a report to the US Justice Department.

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, is fighting a rearguard action to stop Congress imposing more humane rules on interrogating prisoners.

Bowing to pressure over prisoner abuse scandals, the Pentagon has approved a set of rules for interrogations, it emerged yesterday.

Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney: led a lobbying campaign against a ban

The new policy seeks to address the fallout of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by establishing a clear chain of command for questioning and requiring CIA interrogators to follow Pentagon guidelines.

But the changes do not address a debate in Washington over whether a second, more far-reaching directive should include wording from the Geneva Convention barring "cruel, humiliating and degrading" treatment.

In a critical test of his influence, Mr Cheney is pitting himself against the Senate and leading officials in the departments of State and Defence in his attempt to allow interrogators a free rein in questioning suspects.

The argument comes at a sensitive time for Mr Cheney who is facing intensified scrutiny after the indictment of his chief aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, over a CIA-leak scandal.

Senator John McCain, the Republican behind legislation pushing for an explicit ban on torture and other inhuman treatment, yesterday piled on the pressure.

"I believe that he's doing what he thinks is best for America, and he's committed and passionate about it, we just simply have a disagreement on this issue," he told CNN. Mr McCain, who was detained and tortured in the Vietnam war, said that anyone who had been in combat knew that torture was a mistake. "The price we pay for being able to torture people is huge throughout the world."

Mr Cheney has led a lobbying campaign against a ban amid reports of fiery exchanges between him and senior officials in the Pentagon and the State Department.

He believes Islamist terrorism requires extraordinary measures and the military should have maximum "flexibility" to combat the threat. He is now campaigning for an exemption for the CIA from such a ban, which was approved by the Senate last month but faces further debate before it can become law.

He wielded huge influence in Mr Bush's first term with his aides playing a key role in the critical decisions in the countdown to the war in Iraq.

But with the situation in Iraq far less rosy than he predicted, and amid a renewed focus over America's interrogation procedures, the White House is being monitored closely for the slightest sign that he is losing clout.

America's record in interrogating prisoners has come under fresh scrutiny after the Washington Post reported that the CIA was running secret prisons across the world.

The administration has refused to confirm or deny the report, but the Council of Europe said yesterday it would launch an investigation. Mr Bush defended America's record on Monday saying "we do not torture".

Q What are we asking for?
Q Would you characterize what we're asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're asking to do what is necessary to protect the American people in a way that is consistent with our laws and our treaty obligations. And that's what we --

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from the military?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, let's talk about people that you're talking about who have been brought to justice and captured. You're talking about people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad; people like Abu Zubaydah.

Q I'm asking you --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, this is facts about what you're talking about.

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from rules that would govern the conduct of our military in interrogation practices?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are already laws and rules that are on the books, and we follow those laws and rules. What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible, not only --

Q What does that mean --

MR. McCLELLAN: What I'm telling you right now -- not only to protect Americans from an attack, but to prevent an attack from happening in the first place. And, you bet, when we capture terrorist leaders, we are going to seek to find out information that will protect -- that prevent attacks from happening in the first place. But we have an obligation to do so. Our military knows this; all people within the United States government know this. We have an obligation to do so in a way that is consistent with our laws and values.

Now, the people that you are bringing up -- you're talking about in the context, and I think it's important for the American people to know, are people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh -- these are -- these are dangerous killers.

Q So they're all killers --
Q Did you ask for an exemption on torture? That's a simple question, yes or no.

MR. McCLELLAN: No. And we have not. That's what I told you at the beginning.

Q You want to reserve the ability to use tougher tactics with those individuals who you mentioned.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, obviously, you have a different view from the American people. I think the American people understand the importance of doing everything within our power and within our laws to protect the American people.

Q Scott, are you saying that Cheney did not ask --
Q What is it that you want the -- what is it that you want the CIA to be able to do that the U.S. Armed Forces are not allowed to do?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into talking about national security matters, Bill. I don't do that, because this involves --

Q This would be the exemption, in other words.

MR. McCLELLAN: This involves information that relates to doing all we can to protect the American people. And if you have a different view -- obviously, some of you on this room -- in this room have a different view, some of you on the front row have a different view.

Q We simply are asking a question.
Q What is the Vice President -- what is the Vice President asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's spelled out in our statement of administration policy in terms of what our views are. That's very public information. In terms of our discussions with members of Congress --

Q -- no, it's not --

MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of our members -- like I said, there are already laws on the books that we have to adhere to and abide by, and we do. And we believe that those laws and those obligations address these issues.

Q So then why is the Vice President continuing to lobby on this issue? If you're very happy with the laws on the books, what needs change?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you asked me -- you want to ask questions of the Vice President's office, feel free to do that. We've made our position very clear, and it's spelled out on our website for everybody to see.

Q We don't need a website, we need you from the podium.

MR. McCLELLAN: And what I just told you is what our view is.

Q But Scott, do you see the contradiction --

MR. McCLELLAN: Jessica, go ahead.

The vice president's steely hand and hard-line handiwork are making it impossible for the Bush-Cheney administration's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy to succeed in her prime mission - winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It happens, of course, mainly behind closed doors in the West Wing, the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

The latest is something that once would have been unthinkable as a policy of the United States: The officially sanctioned abuse and inhumane treatment of some prisoners or suspects in the war on terror.

Cheney mounted a major effort to defeat an amendment to the defense spending bill that merely adopted as U.S. policy the standard Geneva Convention language prohibiting the treatment of terrorist prisoners or suspects in "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" ways. The amendment was introduced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Navy hero in the Vietnam War who was among the many Americans who were beaten, abused and tortured as prisoners of war.

After the Senate adopted the amendment by a vote of 90-9, Cheney began urging Republican senators to at least add a loophole that would exempt operatives of the CIA from that policy. In other words, America's veep would have America tell the world that it is OK for certain U.S. personnel to treat prisoners and suspects in ways that are "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" _ as long as the U.S. personnel draw paychecks from the appropriate pocket of the U.S. bureaucracy. In this case, the CIA.

It is enough to sadden the hearts and boggle the minds of Americans who remember when the world recoiled at horrific tales of Japanese and German torture of prisoners in World War II _ and North Vietnamese abuses of U.S. captives (including McCain) in the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton.

That is why prominent Republican senators recoiled from Cheney's effort. House Republican leaders bowed to the veep, delaying a vote on the bill, but advised the measure is likely to pass.

Now think about the hearts and minds in the Arab world and the effect Cheney's policy will have on them. One day, Muslims see pictures of inhumane abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib and accounts of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Next, they hear Bush officials assuring that torture and abuse is not U.S. policy. Now comes pleading for a loophole that can only mean it is policy.

Which brings us to Karen Hughes. Before President Bush asked his close confidant to return from the private sector to take the job, a Government Accountability Office report had warned that "recent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world. ... Such anti-American sentiments can increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States' ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics' enthusiasm for U.S. business services and products."

No wonder a prominent administration figure promptly hailed Hughes' appointment by noting that public diplomacy "has been a very weak part of our arsenal ... (but) having Karen Hughes over there ... gives us the best combination of people (to) actively and aggressively address those issues." That designated hailer-in-chief was Cheney.

This just in: The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Army field manual has been revised to tighten controls over the questioning of suspected terrorists. But not all is clear. The new manual says CIA interrogators will follow Pentagon guidelines in interrogating "military prisoners." But the Bush administration also maintains that terrorist suspects are not military prisoners.

On Monday, Bush issued a ringing declaration: "We do not torture." It was followed by a wiggling explanation: "Our country is at war and our government has the obligation to protect the American people. Anything we do to that end, in that effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law."

Meanwhile, Cheney is keeping his hard-line hand in it, struggling to bend the law and the definitions just enough to give CIA operatives room to do their unspoken, undefined thing. If Cheney succeeds, there will be pictures of those unspoken/undefined acts and the revelations will rocket around the world and be recycled 24/7 on Arab television.

Which is to say that if Cheney succeeds, Hughes fails. And America will be forever enshrined in the worst of all ways within millions of hearts and minds around the world.

(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.

The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the C.I.A. about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.

The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bans torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.

The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.'s inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.

The agency said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday, but would not comment on any classified report issued by Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in American law.

The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.

In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.

The current and former intelligence officials who described Mr. Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in specific detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the agency's handling of terror suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.

Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but did not describe them. The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress, but whose reports to the agency's director are not binding.

Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's general counsel. To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against C.I.A. officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the current and former intelligence officials said Mr. Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.

"The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects and other terrorism suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. Mr. Radsan, now an associate professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, would not comment on Mr. Helgerson's report.

Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the C.I.A. should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow. In opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the C.I.A. should be granted an exemption allowing it extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks. [...]

Some former intelligence officials have said the C.I.A. imposed tighter safeguards on its interrogation procedures after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in May 2004. That was about the same time Mr. Helgerson completed his report.

The agency issued its earlier statement on the legality of approved interrogation techniques after Mr. Goss, in testimony before Congress on March 17, said that all interrogation techniques used "at this time" were legal but declined, when asked, to make the same broad assertion about practices used over the past few years.

On March 18, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, the agency's director of public affairs, said that "C.I.A. policies on interrogation have always followed legal guidance from the Department of Justice."

GOP hypocritically calls for probe of CIA secret prison leak. The House and Senate GOP leadership is hypocritically calling for a congressional and Justice Department probe of the leak of classified material concerning a network of secret prisons around the world. In so doing, the GOP is verifying the veracity of the Washington Post's report about the existence of the prisons.

This GOP strategy is aimed at 1) diverting attention away from the White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates non official cover network; 2) equating a crime (divulging a highly sensitive covert operation) to blowing the whistle on systematic violations of U.S. and international law (revealing U.S.-run torture camps in secret locations); and 3) trying to get the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to target anti-war journalists who have written about the secret detention centers to reveal their sources.

Adding to the poisonous waters he has already created, CIA Director and Bush flunky Porter Goss has asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak about the secret prisons. There are reports that the information on the prisons actually emanated from a GOP senator who is opposed to the torture of prisoners and who serves on one of the oversight committees -- Intelligence and Armed Services. Expect the FBI to talk soon to Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Trent Lott.

WASHINGTON -- The White House on Tuesday defended its efforts to head off new restrictions on the U.S. treatment of war prisoners as the issue headed toward a showdown in Congress that has attracted worldwide interest.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Vice President Dick Cheney was representing the views of President Bush in lobbying lawmakers to exempt the CIA from legislation that would ban the inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists and other detainees.

McClellan said existing laws and regulations were adequate to prevent torture of the prisoners, including those held in what are reported to be secret CIA-operated facilities in Eastern Europe.

"We follow those laws and rules," McClellan said. "What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible."

The White House's aggressive lobbying comes as House and Senate negotiators are considering a torture ban that, as an amendment to a defense spending bill, breezed through the Senate last month on a 90-9 vote.

The debate was being watched closely in other countries. Some critics of the U.S. have interpreted the administration's aversion to new restrictions as confirmation that it favors the use of torture as an interrogation tactic.

The torture ban, which was omitted from the House version of the defense spending bill, would make the Army field manual the authority on interrogations and would bar all U.S. government agencies from "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of prisoners.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on Tuesday postponed formal discussions on the amendment by negotiators until next week. But a House GOP leadership aide said that the top House and Senate lawmakers have been unofficially meeting on the torture-ban amendment, which was proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

As Congress considers the torture ban that would apply to all government agencies, the Army is scrambling to tighten its rules for prisoner interrogation.

Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey plans to enact 204 "corrective actions" in a new draft version the Army Field Manual and other policy directives, Army officials said.

Criticism of US. interrogation tactics was largely spurred by a series of abuses shown in photographs of naked, hooded detainees at the Abu Ghraib military prison outside of Baghdad. The photographs were released last year, and several soldiers have been prosecuted on charges stemming from the abuse.

One of the new rules clarifies the chain of command for military prisons. For instance, A military police commander -- not a military intelligence officer -- must be in charge of the detention facility.

Medical personnel, who were criticized in a New England Journal of Medicine article for allegedly helping interrogators spot physical and mental vulnerabilities among prisoners, would be barred from providing information to interrogators, officials said.

Other changes would require a senior officer and a senior noncommissioned officer to be inside a prison facility at all times, require that all soldiers handling detainees be certified by the Army in such duties, and require autopsies for all detainees who die in custody. Red Cross reports must be sent to commanders within 24 hours. Contractors would be required to have the same training as Army troops and will be monitored.

In a contentious exchange with White House reporters on Tuesday, McClellan said Cheney's lobbying efforts were intended to preserve the ability to question suspected terrorists aggressively, "consistent with our laws and values."

McClellan denied that the CIA exemption sought by the vice president would allow CIA operatives to torture foreign detainees to extract information about suspected terrorist plots.

McClellan declined, however, to specify exactly what practices Cheney was attempting to preserve in his conversations with lawmakers.

The president of embattled Taser International came to Atlanta Tuesday in his ongoing effort to win over hearts and minds.

Tom Smith's mission this time was to try to change the mind of Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Charles Steele, Jr., who has called the Taser stun gun a "murder weapon" and is seeking a moratorium on the Taser's use and sales.

"I believe there's a lot of misinformation on this issue," Smith told the group that included four SCLC officials. "We're saving lives and reducing injuries all across the country. We can't save all the lives." The meeting ended in a stalemate.

"I'm more convinced now we need a moratorium," Steele said after Smith finished his presentation on how the weapon is a vital "less-than-lethal" alternative for police in subduing dangerous and unruly subjects. "I'm disappointed to hear that," Smith responded.

Steele said the device, which fires two small fish hooks into a subject and then knocks them down with an electric shock, was sold too forcefully to law enforcement agencies before the medical side effects were known. Taser says nearly half the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies purchased the weapon since its release five years ago.

Amnesty International has said at least 129 people died between 2001 and July 2005 after being shocked with Tasers. At least 18 autopsies have labeled the Taser as a contributing factor in the deaths.

The SCLC last week announced it will stage a Nov. 12 protest march in Gwinnett County over the 2004 death of inmate Frederick Williams. The group also said it would mount a new national attack against Taser. "The reality of the fact is people are dying," Steele said after the meeting. "There are some officers with a feel-good mentality [about] using the Taser."

Both Steele and Smith brought law enforcement experts to the meeting held at a downtown hotel.

Terry Hilliard, a retired Chicago police superintendent who works as a Taser consultant, said: "If we have a moratorium, those cops will go back to deadly force. You know who's most affected is those kids in the inner cities."

Tuscaloosa County, Ala., Sheriff Ted Sexton, long a friend of Steele's, attended the meeting at the SCLC leader's request. Sexton, who is also the president of the National Sheriffs' Association, recently called for a moratorium on most Taser use in his department.

Before reading this article, please click on the web link below. Listen to the screams of the young woman who was tasered by 2, burly, fully armed Boynton Beach, Florida, police officers, during a routine traffic stop. Her "crime?" She had refused to get out of her vehicle immediately, when so ordered by the officers. She can be heard clearly, in the video, attempting to finish informing a contact on her cell phone, her mother, as to her exact location and circumstances. That is an important point in this incident for a number of reasons. Rather than to allow her the few seconds, or perhaps a minute or two at most, to calm down and finish her call, the officers tasered her. Not once, twice.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html

How many seconds of her screams were you able to endure before having to stop the video or turn off the sound? 5 seconds? 10? 30? The entire video? The answer to that will probably be shortest for those who have experienced the greatest amounts of physical pain and longest for those who have never known dire pain up close, ugly and personal, from the inside out. But, think about this: The officers who inflicted that brutal torture upon her not only felt no empathy for the indisputable agony they'd caused, they tasered her a second time for the "offence" of being unable to place her hands behind her back. Yet the officers had to have known that their first shot had rendered her completely unable to initiate or control any movements of her body.

It is also necessary, in an effort to clarify the issues in this incident, to provide some background on the circumstances in which Ms. Goodwin found herself when she was pulled over for a traffic violation. Another serious problem with tasers is the detrimental effects they seem to have on the abilities of the law enforcement personnel wielding them to use sound judgment as to when, and when not, to use a potentially lethal weapon against a civilian who is not in the act of committing a violent crime and not attempting to flee. The background in Ms. Goodwin's case provides a striking example of the apparent loss of reason and judgment present in taser armed law enforcement officers.

A growing number of women in the U.S., including several Florida residents, have been raped by one or 2 men posing as cops making routine traffic stops. This common criminal MO has been used by rapists in every area of the country, and several women were killed in the midwest, along Interstates 80 and 90, during the 1990s. The fact that rapes and rape-murders by police, and/or police impostors, have been happening since the 1970s should be common knowledge to every active duty law enforcement officer in this country. Women's rape support groups and self defense organisations, including those affiliated with the national YWCA, have long recommended that women driving alone, when ordered to pull over by a patrol car should continue to drive slowly, safely and carefully until reaching a police station, firehouse, ambulance company or other municipal office, rather than stopping at once.

In addition, women who have cell phones are advised to contact a friend or family member and report their exact location and circumstances to someone they can trust to follow up on the call. They are advised do so before either opening the window or getting out of the vehicle. These guidelines have been sent to police departments around the country, and should be common knowledge to all police officers by now. Ms. Goodwin was following exactly the recommended personal safety guidelines for any woman driving alone when she called to report her situation to her mother.

But the Boynton Beach Police Department is evidently unaware of even that much factual information regarding the rights and needs of the public they are allegedly sworn to "protect and serve." Not coincidentally, among traffic stop taser incidents thus far reported, all but one victim was a woman, one of whom was 8 months pregnant. Never before have police in routine traffic stops even considered using weapons against a pregnant woman, or women in general, nor against children, elderly and disabled people, but such incidents are now becoming routine for law enforcement and security personnel armed with tasers.

Other police tasering victims in the past months include a 75 year old woman who was a confused visitor in a nursing home, a 13 year old girl who was yelling at her mother, an epileptic man in need of medication, and an unruly 6 year old child in a school principal's office, tasered to supposedly "keep him from hurting himself" with a piece of broken glass he was wielding. There is obviously some essential element of the plain old common sense police officers once used in their jobs that is being forgotten as soon as a taser is in hand. They fail to realize that the taser is, in fact, a weapon, and that tasers can kill. This is largely due to the product "information" they have received about tasers from the manufacturer. The only taser product information available, as yet, comes from Taser International, Inc., and without benefit of any actual scientific and medical studies of tasers' actions and effects having ever been done.

A basic psychological element tasers seem to cancel is the self restraint of police officers using them. A fundamental and important question comes to mind here: What would they have done, in all of these situations, had they NOT had tasers? Tasers are being used indiscriminately, with alarming and growing frequency, in situations where there is no justification for the use of a weapon, and where there would have been a far less violent, or even lethal outcome, had no taser been available. The last point holds especially true for all of the past year's 103 taser related deaths. Had the officers involved not had tasers, it is most likely that all of those victims would still be alive.

It also seems that tasers remove all empathy from the officers who use them. It may be that most officers have been so thoroughly convinced of the taser's benign nature they simply fail to understand that it can harm anyone, not even a small child. It is nearly certain that they do not consider it a weapon of last or next to the last resort, but of first and only choice in conflicts with even minimally recalcitrant members of the public. They do not hesitate to use tasers immediately and repeatedly. This is insanity. It would be immediately recognized as insane behaviour if the weapon being used so frequently, arbitrarily and dangerously by police officers were a cudgel or a whip, for example. But there is a peculiar and lethal blind spot in the public's attention and consciousness regarding tasers. Yet tasers are frightening technological devices that deliver a massive dose of artificial lightning to the victim's body and brain.

In the video of Ms. Goodwin's tasering, the utter loss of reason by the police officers is striking. They DO know that the taser's effect is to make all voluntary movement and muscle control impossible. That is why and how it "stuns" someone. That information, including witnessing the effect, even shooting each other with their tasers and experiencing it for themselves, is an integral part of their training in the use of these weapons. Yet, they tasered this woman a second time for her "disobedience" in "refusing" to put her hands behind her back, when she was, in fact, absolutely incapacitated from doing that by the very taser blast they'd just given her. That is completely irrational behaviour. Their logical, reasoning minds had ceased to function at all. They had ceased to be human at that point, and were then acting/reacting on the purely "lizard brain" level. They had reverted to instinctual, predatory, hunting pack mentation and behaviour.

WHAT WOULD THESE POLICE OFFICERS HAVE DONE IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN ARMED WITH TASERS? Whatever it was, that is what and as they should have done, and never even thought to do, not only in Ms. Goodwin's case, but in all of the previously cited incidents of unjustifiable taser use against innocent civilians. Somehow, once armed with a taser, a police officer becomes worse than trigger happy. It becomes a literal "shoot first and ask questions," or even think at all, "later" reflex for them to use these weapons. The only problem being that there were 103 dead, innocent victims of tasers in the past year who would be alive here and now if the police officers who shot them had not been armed with tasers.

It is clear that the officer who fired the first time, as displayed in his gestures, voice and bearing, was angered by Ms. Goodwin's defiance of his order to leave her car at once. What really triggered the first tasering was his affronted ego. Next, it was her defenseless agony both of the officers reacted to in the second attack upon her. If you will consider the way a cat goes after a crippled and cornered mouse, then compare that classic predatory behavior with the actions of these two Boynton Beach cops, you will come to the realization that they were predators hotly pursuing and enjoying the "killing" of their chosen prey. While that dynamic may or may not be present in the tasering of other victims by police, it is the dynamic in this one incident, with these two police officers.

Whatever the full psychological underpinnings of the ease with which the police in this country and elsewhere are using tasers, there is an element of "gotcha" that has entered the equation. It is probably subconscious, and was previously kept in check by an awareness that all of the weapons available to them, i.e. nightstick, gun, mace, could and would cause injuries to their victims. Police officers, prior to being armed with tasers, knew that they themselves would be held accountable if they used any of their weapons in a trivial matter and caused injury to an innocent civilian. That was the check on their behaviour, the previous restraint which is now obviously missing. With the threat of their own personal accountability and probable punishment removed, the officers strike out at will, on a whim and whenever it suits them. And, thus far, no police department or court has told them to stop it, or yet held a single officer accountable for a taser fatality, let alone for the unnecessary use of a taser.

The blame for the rising numbers of taser deaths, and the rising frequency of taser use, lies squarely in two camps, both of which are profiting handsomely, in different ways, from the cancerous spread of the use of tasers. The owners of the company that makes the devices are getting filthy rich, and the police who use them are literally getting a free license to torture and potentially kill anyone who even dares to rub them the wrong way, let alone to "argue" with them or refuse to obey them immediately and in every slightest regard. Big payoffs indeed, for both sides.

Police armed with tasers think that they've been given the perfect means to "get" everyone who defies their authority even slightly, by using a weapon that will not result in harm to their targets. That is how the taser has been and is being billed, as a totally harmless weapon cops can use freely, anywhere, anytime, on anyone, with no adverse or lasting consequences to the victims beyond the temporary, all encompassing pain and paralysis it inflicts.

However, in the horrendous "torture guidelines" that brought us Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and worse, one of the criteria cited, in an absurdly narrow definition of what does constitute torture, is "producing pain sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death." Thus, it has clearly been long known and well documented that pain alone, if severe enough, can and will kill. Is it the agony inflicted by tasers, an essential ingredient in their much touted "stopping power," that is randomly killing people?

The amount of pain necessary to reduce any human being to the horrified screams of Ms. Goodwin, after the first taser blast, is at least equal to that of having several major bones broken, badly, all at once. Only those who have experienced that amount of pain for themselves will be able to fully appreciate the horror of that recording. An exponentially worse level of pain is required to reduce a human being to the hopeless, uncontrollable type and cadence of moaning semi-screams being heard after she was hit with the second taser jolt. By the time any human being has been reduced to the second stage, he or she would gladly die to escape the agony. Again, only those who have experienced it themselves will know the truth of it. Those who have not had the intimate experience of pain severe enough to cause such responses should fervently hope that they never will.

The sounds you heard in that video are not those of a hysterical woman over- reacting to a fairly mild pain. They are the sounds of a human being who has just been psychologically and emotionally destroyed by a torture so profoundly shattering that she will never be the same again. She will have PTSD from it, and suffer damages in mind and spirit for the rest of her life. It will either make her or break her, in terms of her personal development over all the rest of the years of her life. Either way, SHE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. Neither will any victim of a taser.

She has lost the last vestiges of her innocence: Her belief that there is any safety for her in this world; her innate certainty that bad things won't happen to her, personally; her naiveté in not being aware of her own vulnerability to every possible ill, terror and suffering that can afflict a human being; her basic sense of worth, of being deserving anything good; her dignity and sense of personal privacy. All those things and more were annihilated with the taser's total and violent destruction of her body and brain's neuro-synaptic impulses and connections. The taser inflicts a lifetime's worth of punishment upon its victims in a very few minutes. Make no mistake of that. The pain tasers inflict is, all alone, "sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death."

There is a solid and growing body of medical evidence to support the contention that the electrical shock delivered by a taser can and does kill, based upon the overall health, age, sex, race, galvanic skin conduction status and serum electrolyte balance of the victims. There were 103 taser deaths in the U.S and Canada in the past year, and the one, most obvious cause of death failing to be considered by coroners is the systemic neurological shock and trauma to the brain that can result in death from pain alone, if the pain is severe enough. It is directly because of the advertising and promotional materials distributed by the manufacturer of tasers that this very real and probable cause of death for taser victims has been overlooked, or even deliberately denied and hidden.

Those pamphlets and promotional videos say, over and over, as a litany - begging the remark that the makers of tasers "doth protest overly much" - that the electrical shock of a taser does not produce severe enough pain to cause harm. That is a blatant lie. Any injury that inflicts so much pain as to render an adult unable to control their own muscles and causes the bladder to void from the stress, induces the most extreme degree of pain possible