By Dahr Jamail
May 19, 2005

Her name is Ahlam Abt Al-Hassan. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of when she was shot twice in the head by member of the Mehdi army while waiting for ataxi to go to her job with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) in Diwaniyah.

After nearly three months of work searching women as they entered one of the US bases in Diwaniyah, she was paid a total of $475 from KBR. In return she has lost her eyesight, had to move from Iraq and can’t return because of threatsfrom the Mehdi Army. Her ex-employers will not return any of her calls or requests for assistance.

Friday, 6 May 2005

Chandler stayed in Baghdad as backup person while Pritchard, Provencher, and Fox traveled to Fallujah with members of MPT.

Team traveled to Fallujah with MPTers to do a symbolic action. CPTers and the Shiite MPTers worked together with Suni Muslims from Fallujah to clean up some of the destruction from recent US attacks. It was very well received and considered a huge success. SEE MAY 6 RELEASE

Saturday 7 May 2005

An Iraqi friend called with the welcomed news that his brother-in-law had already been released.

Matthew Chandler left Iraq to return home to friends and family as well as begin a speaking tour on Iraq. Joe Carr arrived safely. He commented that his image of the situation in Baghdad was less like being in an active war zone than he’s expected. Having spent considerable time in Palestine, he commented that the military presence he saw today was less that he was accustomed to seeing there. Provencher took him on a walking tour of the neighborhood and the team made him feel right at home by assigning him the task of cleaning the dinner dishes.

By Joe Carr
16 May, 2005

This morning, a man who told us about his brother who’s been detained, without charges, by Americans for over six months now. He was arrested when a car bomb went off in front of the restaurant he worked in. We frequently hear that when car bombs go off near military convoys, soldiers shoot or arrest everyone around. Traumatized soldiers take out their anger and fear on the nearest targets. Does this practice deter the resistance or only create more fighters?

After the interview, we went by the residency office. The visa processes have changed repeatedly and usually takes multiple trips to get it finished. I’m told that this run-around is the new Iraqi government’s attempt to fight the resistance by keeping close track of foreigners. But all the “foreign fighters” have fake Iraqi Ids and would never go to a residency office, so all it does is make life harder for regular people, and thereby fuel hatred for the government.

Report claims blind eye was turned to sanctions busting by American firms

Julian Borger and Jamie Wilson in Washington
Tuesday May 17, 2005
The Guardian

The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.

The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.