Recommendations (Human Rights Watch gives a list of recommendations to Terrorist Groups in Iraq)

Cease all attacks against civilians, the civilian population and civilian objects, both Iraqi and non-Iraqi. Civil servants, politicians, religious leaders, humanitarian aid workers, journalists and civilian employees of foreign governments are immune from attack;

Cease all attacks that do not discriminate between combatants and civilians, and attacks that cause harm to civilians or civilian objects that is excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage;

Take all feasible precautionary measures during military operations to verify that objectives to be attacked are not civilian but military, and take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack to avoid or minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects;

Take all necessary steps to ensure that insurgent group members understand and respect the obligation to protect civilians and captured combatants;

Refrain from an attack when it becomes apparent the objective or target is not a military one or where civilian loss would be disproportionate;

Give special attention to the potential of civilian harm when operating in residential areas;

Cease any and all abductions and hostage taking of civilians. All civilians currently in detention should be released;

Treat all detainees from the multinational and Iraqi forces humanely. Prohibit and prevent the execution, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees; and

Discipline or expel fighters or commanders who unlawfully detain or mistreat any person in custody, or who target civilians or use indiscriminate or disproportionate force that unnecessarily harms civilians.

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, a post he has held since 1993.

Previously, he was a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. He also worked in private practice as a litigator.

A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Mr. Roth was drawn to the human rights cause in part by his father's experience fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938. He began working on human rights after the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981, and soon also became deeply engaged in fighting military repression in Haiti. In his ten years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, the organization has tripled in size, while greatly expanding its geographic reach, and adding special projects devoted to refugees, children's rights, academic freedom, international justice, AIDS, gay and lesbian rights, and the human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations.

Roth opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He saw the crisis in Iraq as one that should have been dealt with through legal, rather than military, channels. "[T]o stop the Iraqi abuses that were continuing," said Roth, "military intervention was not the last reasonable option. Criminal prosecution, at the very least, should have been tried first."

Since 1993, Kenneth Roth has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based NGO with a strong anti-Israel bias.

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Do you feel a special connection with Israel and that your Judaism affects how you view Israel?

"It certainly does, in the sense that I recognize Israel as a Jewish state. I identify with the people. I visited Israel for the first time just after law school as a tourist in a country that I heard about through many years of Hebrew School. My initial feeling was very positive. As I have gotten to know Israel more from a human rights perspective, I've become much more troubled with the conduct of the government. That hasn't changed my attitude toward the people of Israel or the idea of having a Jewish state, but it has left me troubled by the conduct of a government that claims to act in the name of the Jewish people.

Roth was an attorney with independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation into Iran-Contra. Walsh, a Democrat, indicted former Republican Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger only days before the 1992 election in an apparent attempt to alienate voters from incumbent President George H.W. Bush. Roth's articles have appeared in the New York Review of Books.

Roth also in 2004 wrote to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to charge that U.S. troops in Iraq had violated the 1949 Geneva Conventions by destroying part of a house and arresting the wife and daughter of an Iraqi General being sought.

HRW endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA) of 2004, which was introduced by Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Russell Feingold, Richard Durbin, and Jon Corzine, and Democratic Representatives Howard Berman and William Delahunt. The CLRA was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Moreover, HRW was a signatory to a November 1, 2001 was a signatory to a November 1, 2001 document characterizing the 9/11 attacks as a legal matter to be addressed by criminal-justice procedures rather than military means. Ascribing the hijackers' motives to alleged social injustices against which they were protesting, this document explained that "security and justice are mutually reinforcing goals that ultimately depend upon the promotion of all human rights for all people," and called on the United States "to promote fundamental rights around the world." characterizing the 9/11 attacks as a legal matter to be addressed by criminal-justice procedures rather than military means.

HRW has received funding from: the Ahmanson Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Ford Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Righteous Persons Foundation; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Jonathan F. Fanton became president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1999. With assets of about $4.2 billion, the Foundation is one of the nation's ten largest. It makes grants in the U.S. and abroad, with emphasis on human and community development, education, the environment, population issues, international security, human rights, creativity, and media. From 1978 to 1982 he was vice president for planning at the University of Chicago, where he also taught American history. He is chairman of the largest U.S.-based human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, an advisory trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and former co-chair of the 14th Street/Union Square Local Development Corporation in New York City. As president of New School from 1982 to 1999, he led the integration and enhancement of the seven divisions of the university, expansion of the Greenwich Village campus, and development campaigns.

Fanton received a Ph.D. degree in American history from Yale University, where he served as assistant to President Kingman Brewster and as associate provost.

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