UPDATED - ColdType

Ibn Haithan institute . . .”
The Washington Post reports: “A very important
political component is if you find these
things, how do you establish the proof of that to
the satisfaction of 35 foreign ministries and those
of you in the media?” said Jay Davis, who led the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency until 2001 and
has continued to consult on the Iraqi disarmament
plan. “A large number of conspiracy theorists
all over the world will say the U.S. government
has planted all that stuff.”
POW Coverage
EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
WITH two more U.S. airmen in Iraqi custody, the
POW issue is back on the news. CNN defied the
government this time and did show Al-Jazeera
coverage of Iraqi TV pictures. Meanwhile, in
England, Guardian columnist George Monbiot
challenged what he called double standards by
the U.S. government:
“Suddenly, the government of the United
States has discovered the virtues of international
law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign
state; it may be seeking to destroy every
treaty which impedes its attempts to run the
world, but when five of its captured soldiers
were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras
on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S.
defense secretary, immediately complained that
it is against the Geneva Convention to show photographs
of prisoners of war in a manner that is
humiliating for them.
“He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the
third convention, concerning the treatment of
prisoners, insists that they must at all times be
protected ... against insults and public curiosity.
“This may number among the less heinous of
114
the possible infringements of the laws of war, but
the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are nonnegotiable.
If you break them, you should expect
to be prosecuted for war crimes
“This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his
back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause
of legal warfare is, as head of the defense department,
responsible for a series of crimes sufficient,
were he ever to be tried, to put him away
for the rest of his natural life.”
Official news
THE media reporting came under fire by
TomDispatch.com:
“I caught a fair amount of CNN and MSNBC
this afternoon, and NBC Prime Time news followed
by the Lehrer NewsHour tonight. What
struck me was how much of our periodic 24/7 war
extravaganzas are taken up with official and
semi-official events. I caught, for instance, an
extended performance by Gen. Tommy Franks
and various supporting actors and supporting
screens at the elaborate Centcom set (sorry,
headquarters) in Qatar. I also caught a performance
(sorry, news conference) by Ari Fleischer
(with a few tough questions from reporters,
reflecting perhaps a slight shift in mood) and
then a glimpse of Tariq Aziz defiant in Baghdad.
“Each of these four channels also had their
semi-official events involving military consultants
whose expertise usually lies largely in having
directed some aspect of America’s last wars.
(No former Somalian warlords to offer some
vaunted “balance,” no less a French or Russian
general. Only former American military men or
intelligence officers are considered expert
enough to comment on an American war.) Gen-