Fallujah, Iraq (photo: CPT)

DAHR JAMAIL spent eight months working as an independent journalist in Iraq. As one of the few journalists not “embedded” with U.S. forces, his reports earned a reputation for being an uncompromising look at life under occupation.

Currently, Jamail is back in the U.S. on a speaking tour that will take him to several West Coast cities. He spoke to Socialist Worker’s Eric Ruder about the destruction unleashed on Iraq by the U.S. during two years of occupation.

Interview by Eric Ruder
Socialist Worker

U.S. Army Sergeant Kevin Benderman Steps Up To The Plate, Conscientious Objector Status Pending

By Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia News

The ongoing saga of Sergeant Kevin Benderman’s denial regarding the legitimacy of war and his refusal to participate in it has now crystallized into a war of words and legalities, pitting his beliefs and first-hand battlefield knowledge against an action by the U.S. Government and Army prosecutors who are charging him with desertion for choosing to follow his conscience, in a war declared illegal by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Benderman is scheduled to stand trial before a General Courts-Martial at Ft. Stewart on May 11 on counts of desertion and missing a unit movement.

Benderman’s wife, Monica says that she is having a hard time expressing her feelings at this point. “Our lives right now have been put on hold by this issue. My husband is baring his soul. I don’t know what more proof these people need, something so simple, so basic, and they do not appear to have a clue.”

Senate Appropriations Committee to “Mark Up” Funding Bill on April 6

On April 6 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the Senate Appropriations Committee will meet to “mark-up” the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill which would provide upwards of $80 billion in additional funds for the U.S. war in Iraq. Contact members of the Committee as well as your own Senators to tell them to vote “No”.

Click here to contact members of the Appropriations Committee. Click here to contact your own Senators. Click here for a complete list of members of the Senate Appropriations Committee with their Washington, DC office phone numbers.

Following is a model letter which you could send to your Senator or from which you might derive talking points to include in your own letter.

We urge you to vote against the proposed Supplemental Spending Bill which is pending before the U.S. Senate. We urge you to publicly state your oppostion to this bill, both verbally and in writing. Now is the time to begin to end the U.S. war against and occupation of Iraq.

Our country has waged economic and military warfare against the people of Iraq for the past 15 years. It is time for this war to end. It is time to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq; to cancel the “odious debt” incurred by Saddam Hussein; to pay reparations to Iraqis injured by the U.S. war against Iraqi people; and to fully fund the reconstruction of Iraq as Iraqis exercise self-determination and rebuild their country in a manner which benefits the ordinary Iraqi and not the interests of the U.S., the World Bank, the IMF or other international forces.

Following are the Washington, D.C. office phone numbers of Senators who are members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Click on “continue reading” for the complete list with Washington, D.C. office phone numbers.

By Cliff Kindy
Christian Peacemaker Teams

Recently world media carried the story about the U.S. shooting of an Italian kidnap victim and her security guard. At the same time, a Bulgarian soldier died as U.S. forces opened fire from a checkpoint. These stories made the news, but the regular incidents of Iraqis injured in similar circumstances often remain unpublicized.

An Iraqi friend asked me to visit his cousin. Lafta Rahim, 39, who has four children, was at home in his bed. Immediately his smile drew me as we met. Then I noticed contraptions on his body. His upper left arm had an 8-inch rod parallel to the bone, attached with six pins and two clamps. His lower right leg had a similar rod, this one with five pins and five clamps. Bullets had shattered both bones.

Lafta told his story.