When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy �intelligence organizations and military forces, once forbidden from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders by the executive orders of two recent presidents, have now embarked on an open, all-out effort to find and kill Saddam Hussein in a campaign with no precedents in American history. Despite three strikes aimed at Mr. Hussein since the opening night of the American war on Iraq, intelligence officials have conceded that a recent broadcast of Mr. Hussein's voice is probably genuine. A concession that the Iraqi leader remains alive is also implicit in Washington's offer of a $25 million reward for his capture or proof of his death. Since President Bush announced the end of major military operations on May 1, it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war is not over, that there is a concerted campaign of resistance and that Mr. Hussein remains a formidable foe. Over the last 10 days the chief American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has frequently stressed the importance of capturing or killing Mr. Hussein. The campaign to kill him, frankly admitted and discussed by high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public, personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence � an eye for an eye, a life for a life. American officials in the White House and Iraq have argued that Mr. Hussein's survival encourages resistance, and killing him is therefore a legitimate act of war. But the United States has never before openly marked foreign leaders for killing. Treating it as routine could level the moral playing field and invite retaliation in kind, and makes every American official both here and in the Middle East a target of opportunity. Realists may scoff that war is war and that things have always been this way, but in fact personalized killing has a way of deepening the bitterness of war without bringing conflict closer to resolution. In April 1986 President Reagan authorized an air raid on the home of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya that spared him but killed his daughter. The Reagan administration never acknowledged that Colonel Qaddafi, personally, was the target, nor did it publicly speculate two years later that Libya's bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, was Colonel Qaddafi's revenge for the death of his daughter. But the administration got the message: after Lockerbie, Washington relied on legal action to settle the score. It is impossible to know how, or if, Mr. Hussein's supporters will find a way to retaliate for the American campaign to kill the deposed Iraqi leader, but that effort inevitably reopens a long-simmering American argument over assassination, never embraced openly in so many words but never repudiated once and for all. Despite much tough talk of killing enemies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration still shrinks from using the word assassination, and much of the public continues to oppose it as both dangerous and wrong � dangerous because it commits the United States to a campaign of murder and countermurder, and wrong because hunting people down, however it plays in the movies, excuses murder by calling it something else.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/weekinreview/13POWE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=

Court Affirms Bush's Power to Detain Citizen as Enemy A sharply divided federal appeals court today upheld President Bush's authority to detain indefinitely as an enemy combatant a United States citizen captured on the battlefield and to deny him access to a lawyer. The full roster of active judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., voted 8 to 4 to affirm a ruling in January that first found such a right, the administration's most important legal victory to date concerning expansion of its authority since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/national/10DETA.html

Palestinians Say the Truce Is in Jeopardy By GREG MYRE Palestinians expressed growing frustration today over the pace of talks with Israel, and what they see as Israel's unwillingness to grant concessions, and warned that the current truce could be in jeopardy if progress was not achieved soon on crucial issues like Palestinian prisoner releases and Israeli troop withdrawals. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/international/middleeast/10MIDE.html

Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA Small Internet radio stations, angered over what they say is the recording industry's effort to wield royalty rates as a weapon to drive them out of business, say they are preparing to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America. The Las Vegas-based Webcaster Alliance will send a letter today to the RIAA, threatening to sue the group for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act unless the RIAA agrees to reopen negotiations over the royalty rates webcasters must fork over to artists and record labels, Webcaster Alliance attorney Perry Narancic said. "We're trying to negotiate with these people, but with a big stick," Narancic said. The existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged, Narancic said. The Webcaster Alliance has more than 300 members ranging from tiny hobbyists to small broadcast stations with accompanying Internet sites. The group's members include stations specializing in trance, bluegrass, classical and other genres.� http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31245-2003Jul9.html

Water and Electricity in Baghdad Are Still Below Prewar Levels, Officials Say Two officials overseeing the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq said today that the electricity and drinking water available in Baghdad and some other parts of the country remained below prewar levels. The assessment appeared to run counter to earlier assurances by the Pentagon that the goal levels for improving those services had been or were close to being met in many parts of the country. It also reflects the damage done by looters and saboteurs since the end of major combat two months ago. As the occupation officials in Baghdad warned of tough times ahead, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who led allied forces through the war, stepped down today as head of the United States Central Command. He was replaced by his deputy, Gen. John P. Abizaid, who must now secure the victory in an Iraq where American troops face almost daily attack. In a video conference with reporters at the Pentagon, the two occupation officials in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Carl Strock of the Army and Andrew Bearpark, the occupation's director of regional services, said that electricity in Baghdad was being redirected to other parts of the country even though the lack of power in the capital had been cited as one reason for the continuing violence. Drinking water in Baghdad could be restored to prewar levels by the end of July, the officials said, but they conceded that efforts to treat raw sewage now pouring into the Tigris River were still months away. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/international/worldspecial/08POST.html?pagewanted=print&position=

TRUSTe issues privacy ultimatum to Batteries.com. Maier says that the investigation into Batteries.com concluded with the following six findings, all of which constituted violations of TRUSTe's policies. Batteries.com provided personal data to a third party called sungifts.com, an organization that had a relationship with Men's Journal and it did this for marketing purposes. Batteries.com did not obtain approval from TRUSTe. It needs to do that because that sharing of information constitutes a material change to the privacy practice under which the license was granted. Batteries.com did not notify customers that practices were changing in terms of sharing with third party. Such notification is required of all TRUSTe licensees. In transferring its customers' personal identity information (names, email addresses, physical address, etc.) Batteries.com did not honor the preferences of the customers that opted out from receiving marketing communications from batteries.com. (The marketing communication in question is an email that was sent Batteries.com customers that informed them they would begin receiving the publication unless they opted-out again.) Related to item number 4, the opt-out page requires a link to a privacy statement which it did not have. Batteries.com already transferred the personal data outside of its organization to sungifts.com before the opportunity to opt-out was presented. It needs to go the other way around. Maier said she believes, after conducting the investigation, that the violations were unintentional. But, Maier added, it doesn't matter whether the transgression was intentional or not. "Either way, the outcome would have been the same," said Maier. "We issued a notice to Batteries.com that their license would be terminated unless certain action was taken within 20 days." The required remedies in that notice were as follows: Batteries.com must identify those customers whose opt-outs were not honored, send them an apology explaining TRUSTe's role and the requirement that TRUSTe has put on them as a result of the policy violations. Batteries.com must update its list management and other practices to ensure that opt-outs are respected. Batteries.com must update its privacy statement and other disclosures within its user interface (shopping cart, opt-outs opportunities, etc) to reflect its information practices and TRUSTe's program requirements. Once the privacy statement and disclosure step is completed, Batteries.com must announce to all customers the change in its privacy statement and its practices and the role that TRUSTe has played in those changes and announcements. Batteries.com must allow for TRUSTe to conduct an in-house audit and review of their Batteries.com's privacy and information practices. Batteries.com must, at its own expense, have its executives, marketing and customer service staffs attend TRUSTe-taught privacy training sessions. According to Maier, while TRUSTe demands a fee for the training, those fees don't come close to the total expense so far borne by TRUSTe in investigating the matter and in sending its trainers to Batteries.com for on-site training. "Batteries.com has 20 days to do those things that can be done within a 20-day period and to commit to doing those things that will take longer," said Maier. "The company has agreed to satisfy the remedies. But, if for some reason, they don't, then they're out [of the TRUSTe program]." http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914180,00.html

U.S. Military Trials Displease British Britain has ``strong reservations'' about U.S. plans to try two Britons held at Guantanamo Bay before a military commission, the Foreign Office said Monday. ``We have make clear to the U.S. that we expect the process to meet internationally accepted standards of a fair trial, and we will follow the process very carefully,'' Foreign Office Minister Chris Mullin said, answering a question in the House of Commons. The United States announced last week that two British al-Qaida suspects held at Guantanamo Bay -- Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23 -- were on the initial list of six suspects who could face U.S. military trial. Relatives of the two British detainees said they feared the trials would be unfair. The government is ``fundamentally opposed'' to the death penalty and would raise the ``strongest possible objections'' if there were any chance of it being applied in these cases, Mullin said. ``We have strong reservations about the military commission,'' he added. ``We have raised and will continue to raise these reservations energetically with the U.S.'' Neither of the British detainees has been charged so far. Opposition Conservative legislator Douglas Hogg, who sought the government statement in the Commons, said the U.S. plans were ``wrong, potentially unjust and gravely damaging to the Americans' reputation.'' Hogg said he was concerned about the plight of the two men, asking if it was correct there was no appeal outside the military process and that the defense team would be chosen by the military. ``What steps have been taken to protect their civil rights?'' Hogg asked. Mullin said ministers shared the concerns of Hogg and others. The two suspects could be charged and prosecuted, but this was not automatic, Mullin said, adding that ministers were still seeking details about how a trial would be conducted and expressing ``very strong views.'' Defense lawyers will be nominated by the Americans ``in some way and we are seeking further information about that too,'' Mullin said. ``Many of these aspects are a cause of concern to us and we intend to pursue all of them.'' http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-US-Guantanamo.html

What I Didn't Find in Africa By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg� d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S�o Tom� and Pr�ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake � a form of lightly processed ore � by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.� I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired. (As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors � they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government � and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.) Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.� I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case. Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Libraries Planning a Meeting on Filters fficials of the American Library Assocation will call a meeting with the makers of Internet filtering software next month to voice concern over a federal law that requires libraries and schools to use Internet filters or risk losing federal money. The law, the Children's Internet Protection Act, was upheld last week by the Supreme Court after the librarians challenged the law on constitutional grounds. Judith Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association, said that in the meeting, tentatively scheduled for Aug. 14, librarians will ask the companies to ensure that their software can easily be turned off and on again by librarians. The group will also demand that the companies reveal their database of blocked sites to libraries so they can determine which programs best suit the libraries' needs, or they may work with third parties to develop new filtering software. "If we can't get what we want from the filtering companies, I say let's make our own," Mr. Krug said. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/national/03LIBR.html

U.S. Troops in Iraq Detain 180, Reporter Wounded U.S. forces in Iraq detained 180 people in raids to stamp out resistance to their occupation as a reporter attached to an army unit became the latest casualty of the violence, the military said on Monday. Assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade on Sunday night at an army patrol in the restive town of Falluja, around 50 km west of Baghdad, wounding the journalist who is now in stable condition in hospital, a statement said.� Three people were killed soon afterwards when their pickup truck drove into a military vehicle helping to evacuate the reporter from the area, the U.S. Central Command said. It did not identify the journalist or the dead people. The U.S. military, which has around 156,000 soldiers in Iraq, has launched several operations to stamp out the attacks. The latest, Operation Desert Sidewinder, began on Sunday with infantry soldiers backed by aircraft and armored vehicles. Troops from the U.S. Army's high-tech Fourth Infantry Division detained 32 people and seized weapons including 10 AK- 47 rifles and a mortar in the mission targeting areas north and east of Baghdad, once a bedrock of support for Saddam. The arms haul appeared meager in a country where most homes have at least one weapon. The area was quiet on Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, troops from the First Armored Division detained 148 people in Baghdad as part of Operation Desert Scorpion, which is aimed at stopping guerrilla attacks. Central Command also said troops had conducted 374 joint patrols with Iraqi police, resulting in 319 arrests for criminal offences.� News of the arrests came as Amnesty International expressed concern at the treatment of detainees in Iraq and called for an end to a ban on them receiving visitors and consulting lawyers.� It also called for investigations into consistent testimony from former detainees that troops had used excessive force during arrest or detention. U.S. officers say they have issued strict orders that all Iraqis must be treated humanely.� http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html

Before the Berlin Wall came down the former East Germany was known to be an industrial powerhouse. Every intelligence agency reported this, just as almost every agency reported Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. AI

Agency Disputes C.I.A. View of Trailers as Iraqi Weapons Labs The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States government officials said today. In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President Bush has done. The disclosure of the memorandum is the clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency and made public on May 28 on the C.I.A. Web site. Officials said the C.I.A. and D.I.A. did not consult with other intelligence agencies before issuing the report. The report on the trailers was initially prepared for the White House, and Mr. Bush has cited it as proof that Iraq indeed had a biological weapons program, as the United States has repeatedly alleged, although it has yet to produce any other conclusive evidence. In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers as evidence that the United States had "found the weapons of mass destruction" it was looking for. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell echoed that assessment in a public statement the next day, saying that the accuracy of prewar assessments linking Iraqi trailers to a biological weapons program had been borne out by the discovery. Some intelligence analysts had previously disputed the C.I.A. report, but it had not been known that the C.I.A. report did not reflect an interagency consensus or that any intelligence agency had later objected to its finding. The State Department bureau raised its objections in a memorandum to Mr. Powell, according to Congressional officials. They said the memorandum was cast as a dissent to the C.I.A. report, and that it said that the evidence found to date did not justify the conclusion that the trailers could have had no other purpose than for use as mobile weapons laboratories.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/international/worldspecial/26WEAP.html

The Road to Oceania by WILLIAM GIBSON Walking along Henrietta Street recently, by London's Covent Garden, looking for a restaurant, I found myself thinking of George Orwell. Victor Gollancz Ltd., publisher of Orwell's early work, had its offices there in 1984, when the company published my first novel, a novel of an imagined future. At the time, I felt I had lived most of my life under the looming shadow of that mythic year � Orwell having found his title by inverting the final digits of the year of his book's completion. It seemed very strange to actually be alive in 1984. In retrospect, I think it has seemed stranger even than living in the 21st century. I had a valuable secret in 1984, though, one I owed in large part to Orwell, who would have turned 100 today: I knew that the novel I had written wasn't really about the future, just as "1984" hadn't been about the future, but about 1948. I had relatively little anxiety about eventually finding myself in a society of the sort Orwell imagined. I had other fish to fry, in terms of history and anxiety, and indeed I still do. Today, on Henrietta Street, one sees the rectangular housings of closed-circuit television cameras, angled watchfully down from shop fronts. Orwell might have seen these as something out of Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, penal theorist and spiritual father of the panoptic project of surveillance. But for me they posed stranger possibilities, the street itself seeming to have evolved sensory apparatus in the service of some metaproject beyond any imagining of the closed-circuit system's designers. Orwell knew the power of the press, our first mass medium, and at the BBC he'd witnessed the first electronic medium (radio) as it was brought to bear on wartime public opinion. He died before broadcast television had fully come into its own, but had he lived I doubt that anything about it would have much surprised him. The media of "1984" are broadcast technology imagined in the service of a totalitarian state, and no different from the media of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or of North Korea today � technologically backward societies in which information is still mostly broadcast. Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society. Elsewhere, driven by the acceleration of computing power and connectivity and the simultaneous development of surveillance systems and tracking technologies, we are approaching a theoretical state of absolute informational transparency, one in which "Orwellian" scrutiny is no longer a strictly hierarchical, top-down activity, but to some extent a democratized one. As individuals steadily lose degrees of privacy, so, too, do corporations and states. Loss of traditional privacies may seem in the short term to be driven by issues of national security, but this may prove in time to have been intrinsic to the nature of ubiquitous information. Certain goals of the American government's Total (now Terrorist) Information Awareness initiative may eventually be realized simply by the evolution of the global information system � but not necessarily or exclusively for the benefit of the United States or any other government. This outcome may be an inevitable result of the migration to cyberspace of everything that we do with information. Had Orwell known that computers were coming (out of Bletchley Park, oddly, a dilapidated English country house, home to the pioneering efforts of Alan Turing and other wartime code-breakers) he might have imagined a Ministry of Truth empowered by punch cards and vacuum tubes to better wring the last vestiges of freedom from the population of Oceania. But I doubt his story would have been very different.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25GIBS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

"We just build," a cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying. A cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying that Israel would continue to build new homes, without fanfare, at existing Jewish settlements. Under the peace plans affirmed earlier this month by Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas, Israel must freeze building at formal settlements and tear down small settlement outposts that have gone up without government authorization during the past two years. Israel has taken down 11 of the settlement outposts in the past two weeks, though an almost equal number of new ones have gone up, according to Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. Despite the stipulation in the peace plan, Mr. Sharon has made clear that he opposes a freeze on building at the nearly 150 formal settlements where more than 200,000 settlers live. Mr. Sharon told cabinet ministers there was no need to advertise every time a building permit was issued. "We just build," a cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/23/international/middleeast/23MIDE.html?pagewanted=print&position=

The War in Iraq and International Humanitarian Law Frequently Asked Questions on Occupation (FAQ) Last updated on May 16, 2003) The following FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) analyzes international humanitarian law with respect to belligerent occupation. It does not attempt to cover the issue of occupation comprehensively, but focuses on those issues that might arise during the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies. Key Sections Belligerent Occupation Security in Occupied Areas Looting and "Shoot on Sight" Orders Occupation and the Rights of the Local Population Occupied Population's Well-Being and Health Law and Administration in an Occupied Territory Prisoners of War and Detained Civilians Public Officials in an Occupied Territory Property and Resources of the Occupied Territory End of Occupation http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/ihlfaqoccupation.htm

Letter To The Editor -- Both Sides Want Security In his June 9 front-page story about five Israeli soldiers being killed by Palestinian gunmen, Glenn Frankel mentioned that the attacks were the first by militant groups since the peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4. These also were the first attacks since the spate of suicide bombings on May 17, 18 and 19. However, the Israeli army continues to kill Palestinians. In the 17 days during which no Israelis were killed (May 19 to June 7), Israeli soldiers killed 27 Palestinian civilians. Last month 14 Israelis were killed (12 by bombings), and 61 Palestinians were killed; in April, it was 10 Israelis and 66 Palestinians killed. Until Israel can go 17 days without killing a Palestinian, how can one expect Palestinians to stop killing Israelis?� http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52869-2003Jun12.html

Inmates Released from Guant�namo Tell Tales of Despair Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guant�namo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves. According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months. An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guant�namo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan. None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements. "We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said. The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. "After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long. In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, he and the freed Pakistani detainee talked of what they said was the overwhelming feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained indefinitely at Guant�namo Bay. "I was trying to kill myself," said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, handed over to American soldiers and flown to Guant�namo in January 2002. "I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life. "It is against Islam to commit suicide," he continued, "but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/asia/17PRIS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

In Israeli Gesture, a Tower Is Removed Near a Settlement The rusty tower looked unremarkable. But to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it was technically an "unauthorized outpost," one of 14 erected as adjuncts to nearby Israeli settlements that the army pledged today to destroy as part of Israel's commitment to the current peace plan, called the road map, between Israelis and Palestinians. But to Palestinian leaders and critics of the settlements, the demolition of the tower showed just how little the Sharon government was actually willing to concede, at least now, in the early stages of the peace plan. At the same time, the army tore down two trailers � both, like the watchtower, empty of people � that constituted another outpost, called Neve Erez South, about 15 miles from here. The move against the outposts came after the Israeli Army demolished 13 Palestinian homes early today in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, including one belonging to a militant, Mussa Sakhawil, who helped carry out a shooting on Sunday that left four Israeli soldiers dead. By tonight, the army reported that it had dismantled five of the outposts, none of them inhabited. Of the 14 outposts scheduled for destruction in the next few days, 10 are uninhabited and so, critics argue, their removal is only the most tentative step toward complying with the peace plan. "It's a phony show that has no value," Nabil Abu Rudaneh, an aide to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview tonight. Few issues present a greater challenge to the peace plan's success than the question of the roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. The plan now backed by the Bush administration has chosen to grapple first with that question through the phenomenon of outposts, which are difficult to define. For several years, Israeli settlers have been expanding the reach of their communities by erecting what they call outposts, usually on nearby hilltops. They generally consist of a few structures, some with water and electricity, put in place for various overlapping reasons, as a marker for future expansion or as retribution when Palestinians kill Israelis. Critics contend that some were built exactly for moments like this one: when a peace plan would require concessions that would chip away at the settlements. Many of the outposts are uninhabited. The first phase of the peace plan requires that Israelis � led by Mr. Sharon, a longtime supporter of the settler movement � dismantle all the outposts erected in the last two years since he came to power. Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says 62 such outposts have been built since 2001, mostly in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon's government puts the number closer to 100 and says that it will destroy only those outposts built without government authorization, a qualification not included in the peace plan itself. The dispute over what exactly constitutes an outpost was evident tonight as soldiers tore down the tower on a hill near the settlement of Ofra, which was founded near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the mid-1970's. It also showed the complications for Mr. Sharon as he seeks to comply with the terms of the peace plan without alienating his core political constituents. By tonight, the army reported that it had dismantled five of the outposts, none of them inhabited. Of the 14 outposts scheduled for destruction in the next few days, 10 are uninhabited and so, critics argue, their removal is only the most tentative step toward complying with the peace plan. "It's a phony show that has no value," Nabil Abu Rudaneh, an aide to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview tonight. Few issues present a greater challenge to the peace plan's success than the question of the roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. The plan now backed by the Bush administration has chosen to grapple first with that question through the phenomenon of outposts, which are difficult to define. For several years, Israeli settlers have been expanding the reach of their communities by erecting what they call outposts, usually on nearby hilltops. They generally consist of a few structures, some with water and electricity, put in place for various overlapping reasons, as a marker for future expansion or as retribution when Palestinians kill Israelis. Critics contend that some were built exactly for moments like this one: when a peace plan would require concessions that would chip away at the settlements. Many of the outposts are uninhabited. The first phase of the peace plan requires that Israelis � led by Mr. Sharon, a longtime supporter of the settler movement � dismantle all the outposts erected in the last two years since he came to power. Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says 62 such outposts have been built since 2001, mostly in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon's government puts the number closer to 100 and says that it will destroy only those outposts built without government authorization, a qualification not included in the peace plan itself. The dispute over what exactly constitutes an outpost was evident tonight as soldiers tore down the tower on a hill near the settlement of Ofra, which was founded near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the mid-1970's. It also showed the complications for Mr. Sharon as he seeks to comply with the terms of the peace plan without alienating his core political constituents. On one hilltop is a community called Amona, founded three years ago and holding roughly 25 young Jewish families and their children. On another, until tonight, was the watchtower. Peace Now said it considered the houses and the tower part of the same outpost. The government apparently disagreed, dismantling only the tower and saying it had taken down a separate outpost.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/10/international/middleeast/10SETT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Iraqi Leader Asks U.S. to Stop Military Sweeps Adnan Pachachi, a respected elder Iraqi statesman encouraged by Bush administration officials to enter postwar politics here, criticized the United States military today for its increasingly aggressive operations in Iraq and said they should be suspended while an interim Iraqi government is formed over the next month. Mr. Pachachi said that military sweeps through civilian areas with mass arrests, interrogations and gun battles, intended to suppress the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and military command, were inflaming sentiments against the American and British occupation. He predicted that if such sweeps continued, they would be "exploited by the Baathists," and he added, "It would be much better if we didn't have these operations." Mr. Pachachi, a former foreign minister who returned to Iraq last month after more than 30 years of exile, emphasized that he supported allied efforts to re-establish security in the country. But he expressed concern about the marked escalation of allied assaults through civilian areas, where guerrilla raids have attacked troop convoys or checkpoints and left 10 American soldiers dead in the last three weeks. "These incidents will not help to pacify the country," he said, referring to the military operations. "For now, the quieter it is, the better" for the postwar political process, he added.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/international/worldspecial/15IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=

U.S. Asks Ex-U.N. Inspector to Advise on Arms Search Apparently in a sign of dissatisfaction with the progress on the search for illegal weapons in Iraq, the Bush administration is turning to a former top United Nations weapons inspector to provide advice on how to more effectively focus the hunt, officials said today. David Kay, who led three arms inspection missions as the United Nations chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, has been named a special adviser to the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, providing provide expertise on the best methods for scouring Iraq for illicit arms, the C.I.A. announced today. The surprise appointment of a former United Nations weapons expert follows a period in which the Bush administration frequently criticized the agency's inspection process as insufficient to penetrate Iraq's program of "denial and deception." The decision to have Mr. Kay report directly to Mr. Tenet, while search teams on the ground will be reporting to the Pentagon, will give the C.I.A. a higher profile in a hunt that has been dominated by the Pentagon. Comments by senior officials tonight indicate concern that the move will be viewed as a turf battle between the Pentagon and C.I.A. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/12/international/worldspecial/12WEAP.html