How to lie about Iraq
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to engineer a state of emergency that would justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing - far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR companies - worked together to pull off a sensational piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of modern propaganda.

Blair's office "substantially" altered Iraq dossier, British probe hears
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s office authorized a "substantial rewrite" of the government's controversial dossier on Iraq (news - web sites), an inquiry into the apparent suicide of weapons expert David Kelly.

DNA sparks a computer revolution
It almost sounds too fantastic to be true, but a growing amount of research supports the idea that DNA, the basic building block of life, could also be the basis of a staggeringly powerful new generation of computers.

The e-mails, the rewritten dossier and how No 10 made its case for war
The extent to which Downing Street sought to convince a doubting British public of the need to go to war in Iraq was exposed before the Hutton inquiry yesterday. Hitherto unpublished official papers disclosed at the inquiry showed grave doubts at the highest level of government about its own case for supporting the invasion of Iraq. Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, admitted a week before the publication of the Iraq weapons dossier that it did "nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam", the inquiry was told yesterday. The Prime Minister had already authorised a "substantial rewrite" of the document, before the complaint by Mr Powell.

IRA torturer was in the Royal Marines
HE was one of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA. To rank-and-file 'volunteers', a knock on the door from John Joe Magee was the equivalent of a visit from the Angel of Death.
However, court documents leaked to the Sunday Herald show that Magee, head of the IRA's infamous 'internal security unit', was trained as a member of Britain's special forces. The IRA's 'torturer-in-chief' was in reality one of the UK's most elite soldiers. The documents, lodged as part of a court action being taken against the British government by a disgruntled military intelligence agent, name Magee as a 'former member of the Special Boat Squadron'. The SBS is the marine equivalent to the SAS, with many in its ranks drafted from the Royal Marines, as in Magee's case. IRA sources say that Magee had left the SBS by the time he joined the Provisionals. However, the public disclosure of his time as a member of the special forces will fuel speculation that Magee was an informer for the British.

Blair's own office knew Iraq posed no urgent threat

No 10 knew: Iraq no threat

FirstEnergy has friends in high places
Among Ohio's powerful electric utilities, Akron's FirstEnergy Corp. generates the most political juice. When state legislation threatened its financial health, the firm hired a state senator, a former Ohio House speaker and the governor's top aide. For help with federal bills and regulations, it employs lobbyists whose previous bosses were U.S. presidents and heads of agencies that oversee the regulators. It ranks sixth nationally in money spent by utilities on lobbyists. And its executives - from the CEO to in-house lawyers - have opened their wallets to politicians from Toledo City Council to the White House. Twenty-five executives have contributed a total of $33,500 to President Bush's re-election campaign so far, according to Political Money Line, a database service that tracks money in politics.

UN Headquarters Bombing in Iraq Exposes US News Media Bias
This morning, a car bomb explosion ripped through the hotel housing the UN headquarters in Baghdad: A live shot of the explosion was captured by NHK, a Japanese news crew covering a UN press briefing in the building at the time. Why were no US news organizations covering this news briefing?

Pentagon: How fast does $1.1 trillion disappear in a year?
Cooked books affect everyone, not just those directly involved in the US government. The finances of many countries around the world are dependent on US currency and US Treasury securities. This webpage is a simple attempt to demonstrate the scale of ENRON style accounting in the US government.

Reuters Cameraman Killed For Filming U.S. Graves: Brother
The brother of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana said he was deliberately murdered for discovering mass graves of U.S. troops killed in Iraqi resistance attacks. "The U.S. troops killed my brother in cold blood," Nazmi Dana told IslamOnline.net in exclusive statements. "The U.S. occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the car he was driving," he said. He also recalled that his brother had obtained a prior permit from the U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq to film in the site. On Sunday, August 17, U.S. troops shot dead the award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near the U.S.-run Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad.

Bogus Blair, Bogus Bush
When Bush was trying to con Congress into giving him a blank check to launch a war with Iraq last fall, the president's efforts were hindered by his rather serious credibility gap. Veteran members of the U.S. intelligence community were signaling -- from behind the scenes and, in some cases, publicly -- that they did not buy the argument that Iraq posed a serious enough threat to merit military action. And senior members of the House and Senate, including then-Senate Intelligence Committee chair Bob Graham, who had been reading intelligence reports on Iraq since before Bush entered politics, were asking what had happened that would require a dramatic change in U.S. policy. Other members of Congress, such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Russ Feingold, a Democrat, and Lincoln Chafee, a Republican, said the U.S. should focus on the war against terrorism, as opposed to squandering valuable resources on a fight to remove a secular Iraqi leader who had always been at odds with the Islamic fundamentalists of the al-Qaeda network.