Witnesses in the trial of a U.S. soldier charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib have told the court that the CIA sometimes directed abuse and orders were received from military command to toughen interrogations. The evidence, from an officer and a chief warrant officer who served at the jail, is among the strongest so far in the Abu Ghraib trials pointing to more senior involvement in the abuse and direct orders from above to "soften up" detainees.

Recent reports suggest that the U.S. and Israel have set a well planned attack on Iran. However the authenticity of these reports hasn't been verified yet.

The U.S. has no troops available to attack Iran and Israel would rather not lose any of its soldiers.

However, both Israel and the U.S. have hinted that they might launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, targeting its missile sites, nuclear facilities, and the Iranian leadership located in and around Tehran.

How would this plan be carried out?

According to those reports:

By aircraft attack using U.S. “smart bombs” and the so-called “bunker-buster” bombs, that the U.S. has recently sold to Israel, and which are designed to destroy underground reinforced concrete facilities.

The U.S. apparently sold these bombs to Israel to carry out the main strikes, supporting it with the needed aircraft. The aim will be to wipe out any vestige of nuclear weaponry, its delivery system and all the Iranian leaders capable of starting any attacks on Israel.

Since it would be a problem for Israeli Air Force units to fly round trip from Israel, then these strikes might be launched from U.S. aircraft carriers located in the Persian Gulf area.

Israel might find the early morning as the best time to launch a surprise attack to coincide with religious services in Tehran’s Muslim mosques targeting not only the leading Mullahs inside but a large number of their congregations as well.

Thus, one attack will concentrate on these religious centers and the other will hit both the underground nuclear facilities and identified (courtesy of U.S. satellite shots) missile launching sites.

The U.S. will supply observation and radio surveillance aircraft with radar-jamming capacities operating out of Turkey and Italy.

The initial attack won’t last more than one hour with at least three waves of Israeli aircraft utilized. Israel won’t give any warning to the Iranians, also no declaration of war.

Reports, moreover, pointed out that the attack on Iran has the full backing of the President who wants it launched before the elections. It will be good to use it in a speech to the American people stating that Iran, which is posing international threat, is finally destroyed and no fear of (allegedly) nuclear weapons, all that with the help of Israel.

Thus, no U.S. ground troops will be used; Bush would stress that this is a ‘joint U.S.-Israeli anti-terrorist project’, reports said.

Iraqi officials say the US military has released a key negotiator involved in efforts to avert full scale military assault on Fallujah -- an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

Downing Street today insisted that any decision about UK troop numbers in Iraq would be "about preparing for the Iraqi election, not the US election".

Sudan's government has said it had handled the Darfur crisis better than the United States had dealt with Iraq.

Geoff Hoon is to address the Commons on Monday about proposals to put some British troops under US command in Iraq. The defence secretary is expected to confirm a formal request for assistance has been received from the Americans.

The parents of British soldiers killed in Iraq were among thousands of protesters who joined an anti-war march through central London yesterday.

US forces battled insurgents around the rebel stronghold of Falluja yesterday, and militants ambushed and killed nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan.

US troops pounded the insurgent stronghold Fallujah with airstrikes and tank fire Sunday, and the Iraqi government appealed to residents of the city to expel "foreign terrorists" and "murderers" to prevent an all-out attack.

KABUL - Interim leader Hamid Karzai holds about 70 per cent of the votes counted so far after Afghanistan's landmark presidential election.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq hasn't made the world any safer, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a British TV interview aired Sunday. "I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq," Annan told the ITV network. "We have a lot of work to do as an international community to try and make the world safer," he said. Annan has previously described the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein as "illegal."

The New York Times enthusiastically endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry for president, saying he has "the capacity to do far, far better than"' President George W. Bush.

The U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who refused orders to drive a dangerous route were members of one of a few supply units whose trucks are still unarmored, their commanding general said Sunday.

GENEVA post-G8: Videos, photographs and testimonies; All is set to track law-breakers and hooligans. A carefully planned work continued today by two inspectors, which has led to 200 arrests so far. The G8 police force unit had been dissolved in December 2003; however, it took up service again, in smaller numbers -- two inspectors. These inspectors view films and photographs received from informers and from other police officers. They come to the streets of Geneva where they plan on finding "law-breakers/hooligans." They take new photographs -- perhaps to make a database of activists because they think that they can be the future "law-breakers/hooligans" of future riots in Geneva? As one of the 2 inspectors says to another: "I saw two of my colleagues being lynched during meetings again OMC, in 1998 (tells an inspector) I will be never able to forget." It is not the only thing which the police officer will not forget! Because "Il n'y a pas que le Carpacio comme plat qui se mange froid!" (A French expression. The idea is "the memories are not forgotten" or "resentments are not forgotten.")

FBI Shutdown of Indymedia Threatens Free Speech

In a chilling attack on free speech, U.S. authorities on October 7 seized two internet servers in London belonging to the independent media network Indymedia. More than 20 Indymedia sites around the world were taken down as a result of the raid. The servers were returned on October 14, but no formal charges have been announced and no explanation has been given for the raid.

FBI spokesperson Joe Parris told Agence France Presse that the raid was "not an FBI operation" but that the FBI issued the subpoena on behalf of Italy and Switzerland (10/8/04). U.S. authorities have refused to comment further.

Rackspace, the U.S.-based company that hosts the Indymedia servers at its London offices, revealed in a press release that the subpoena was issued "pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering." Rackspace told Indymedia that they could not reveal any information about the subpoena—apparently the result of a gag order (Indymedia, 10/7/04).

Swiss authorities said they have opened an investigation into Indymedia coverage of the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian and that they had asked the FBI to help remove photos of Swiss undercover police from a French Indymedia site (AFP, 10/9/04). The FBI visited both a Seattle-based Indymedia lawyer and Rackspace about the photos, and Indymedia believed the issue had been resolved (Indymedia, 10/9/04). The site was among those housed on the seized servers; Swiss authorities, however, have not indicated that they asked the FBI to seize the servers.

An Italian prosecutor investigating an anarchist group reportedly also requested assistance from the U.S. to obtain information about posts on Italian Indymedia, but she apparently also did not request the seizure of the servers (italy.indymedia.org, 10/14/04). While the details of the subpoena remain undisclosed, the FBI's aggressive action against Indymedia is troubling.

Indymedia, which provides grassroots reporting on social justice issues and protests, is a decentralized network that allows anyone to post news on its websites. If there is reason to suspect that participants on these websites are involved with criminal activities, shutting down the servers is rather like shutting down the phone system because people have been using the telephone to plot crimes.

To silence over 20 media sites around the world with no charges and no explanation strikes a severe blow against freedom of expression and should trouble media outlets worldwide. European media have been covering the story, but in this country, the media have been virtually silent. Aside from two AP articles (10/8/04, 10/14/04), one by UPI (10/11/04) and one in the Hartford Courant (10/13/04), FAIR found no mainstream news outlets reporting on the Indymedia story.

This is not the first time Indymedia has been targeted by U.S. authorities. During the Republican National Convention in August, the Secret Service attempted to obtain private records from NYC Indymedia's Internet Service Provider; the ISP refused. The FBI attempted to obtain similar records from Indymedia servers during the massive protests against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Quebec City but lost the legal battle (Indymedia, 8/31/04).

If there is credible evidence of actual crimes that involve Indymedia websites, then an investigation that respects Indymedia's rights as a media outlet may be warranted. But FBI action that intimidates or silences media around the world under a shroud of secrecy is an extraordinary and grave threat to free speech.