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Riot breaks out at Abu Ghraib prison as Iraqi tries to escape Tue Jun 07 2005 11:28:59 ET A riot broke out at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad during a failed escape attempt by an Iraqi inmate, the military said Tuesday. The "disturbance" happened late Sunday after the inmate was caught trying to break out at night during a heavy sandstorm, the military said in a statement. On May 26, three detainees escaped from Abu Ghraib through two holes found under a compound fence. The U.S. military has not announced if the escapees have been caught. It...

Amnesty International's latest report didn't denounce conditions for U.S. troops captured and held in detention facilities in Iraq. That's because, as far as anyone knows, there are no camps for American prisoners of war in Iraq. According to Pentagon sources, there is only one U.S. soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq. Sgt. Keith Maupin, 21, has been missing since April 2004. Terrorists in Iraq don't take prisoners. They fight to kill. Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office, noted that while there is no way of knowing how the terrorists would treat U.S. detainees, it is clear how they...

What’s worse than crawling under your beloved house and seeing the foundations rotten with decades of termite damage? NOT crawling under your beloved house and seeing the foundations rotten with decades of termite damage. I’ve been away for a while, doing a little thinking. Usually, my thoughts for these past few years have started at home and then taken me to Iraq, and the war. Lately, though, I have been thinking about Iraq, and my thoughts turn more and more to home. I started thinking along these lines six months ago, after a young Marine shot and killed a wounded...

A judge has ordered the government to release four videos from Abu Ghraib prison and dozens of photographs from the same collection as photos that touched off the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal a year ago. The federal judge issued the order late Wednesday requiring the Army to release the material to the American Civil Liberties Union to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. The ACLU said the material would show that the abuse was "more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers." Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the 144 pictures and videos can be turned over in redacted form...

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney says he's offended by a human rights group's report criticizing conditions at the prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. The report Amnesty International released last week said prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba had been mistreated and called for the prison to be shut down. Cheney derided the London-based group in an interview set to be broadcast Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." "Frankly, I was offended by it," Cheney said in the videotaped interview. "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of...

"Now,Class, Let's Review What The New York Times, The United Nations, And America Haters Everywhere Consider To Be The Most Horrible Atrocities Ever Invented By Man . . ."

A federal judge in New York told the Defense Department yesterday that it would have to release perhaps dozens of photographs taken by an American soldier of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said at a hearing that photographs would be the "best evidence" in the public debate about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The hearing... came in a [FOIA] suit filed by the [ACLU].... In response to the suit the government has already released more than 36,000 pages of documents that shed sometimes dramatic light...

Seymour M. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter now writing for The New Yorker magazine, was asked Tuesday at the University of Michigan why Sen. John Kerry isn't easily leading the presidential race over George W. Bush when the war in Iraq is going so badly. "I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70 million people in America who do not believe in evolution - and those are Bush supporters," said Hersh, who is up front about his support for Kerry. Hersh's observations about the presidential campaign, the war in Iraq...

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said. Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said. The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison. The pictures were given to...

When Newsweek published the inflammatory article about interrogators at Guantanamo flushing a Koran down the toilet, this writer believes that both the reporter and the editor knew precisely what they were doing. Tragically, it was intentional that they wrote the story and in the business sense it was a “mistake” to publish it but otherwise, the story itself was a lie. It is actually comical to watch the leftist “spin machine” working overtime to “control” the damage. Sadly, that once reputable magazine is now worth little more than for use in a sleazy restroom. Part of the problem is that...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive against insurgents in Baghdad's western Abu Ghraib district late Sunday, and aides to a radical anti-American Shiite cleric worked to defuse tensions caused by a recent spate of sectarian killings. Amid the violence, Iraq's government demanded that Syria do more to stop foreign fighters from crossing the porous border and a senior Iraqi Trade Ministry official was killed in an ongoing terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than one month. Iraqi authorities also announced that Ghazi Hammud al-Obeidi, 65, one of the most-wanted...

May 18, 2005 The following are English translated excerpts from an article that appeared in Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia) on May 12, 2005. I believe most of the current suicide terrorists are reported to be from Saudi Arabia and according to this author recruitment became worse when websites began disseminating pictures by email...the method the photos of Abu Ghraib were passed around. This article's clarity and simplicity motivated me to write the letter to Dan Rather that follows it. May 12, 2005 Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia) "The Proponents of the Suicide Ideology Have Taken Advantage of Global Communications" by Sawsan Al-Sha'er. "One...

FORT HOOD, Texas — An Army reservist tearfully apologized for her role in the Abu Ghraib (search) prison scandal, saying she failed in her duties and took full responsibility for her actions. Spc. Sabrina Harman's (search) voice cracked as she spoke during the hearing, where she was sentenced to six months in prison for mistreating detainees. "As a soldier and military police officer, I failed my duties and failed my mission to protect and defend," said Harman, 27. "I not only let down the people in Iraq, but I let down every single soldier that serves today. "My actions potentially...

<p>Twenty-four hours after first apologizing for, and then — as criticism mounted — retracting a bogus story about alleged U.S. military misbehavior at Guantanamo, Newsweek's editors still seem to think they're the victims of the whole sordid saga.</p> <p>"Everyone involved in the reporting process conducted themselves professionally," the magazine's editor, Mark Whitaker, insisted yesterday in several interviews. "We went by the book."</p>

Newsweek is under intense criticism for a report it has now retracted about the American prison in Guantánamo Bay. Since we've weathered a journalistic storm or two, we can only say the best approach is transparency as Newsweek fixes whatever is broken, if anything. There is already a debate about journalistic practices, including the use of anonymous sources, and these things are worth discussing - especially at a time of war, national insecurity and extreme government secrecy, a time when aggressive news reporting is critical. But it is offensive to see the Bush administration use this case for political purposes,...

FORT HOOD, Texas - An Army reservist who appeared in several of the most infamous abuse photos taken by guards at Abu Ghraib prison was sentenced Tuesday to six months in prison for her role in the scandal that rocked the U.S. military's image at home and abroad. The sentence for Spc. Sabrina Harman came a day after she was convicted on six of the seven counts she faced for mistreating detainees at the Baghdad lockup in late 2003. She faced a maximum of five years in prison, though prosecutors asked the jury to give her three years. With credit...

Sixteen deaths and dozens of anti-U.S. riots later, Newsweek's editors say they regret printing an inaccurate story that U.S. interrogators flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. But it wasn't until late yesterday, after mounting criticism, that the magazine officially retracted the article, which was based on misinformation from an unnamed "senior U.S. government official." Until then, Newsweek's editors pointedly refused to do so — saying, "we don't know what the ultimate facts are." Now, apparently, they do. And the facts show that Newsweek was flat out wrong. Yet even its latest statement falls short of an admission...

...Let's say that the item that Newsweek magazine disavowed on Sunday and retracted yesterday — the item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry.... was actually true. It wasn't. But let's say it was. Would factual accuracy have justified publishing the item in Newsweek or anywhere else?... There's no question that, for journalists in trouble, truth is always the best defense in a courtroom. But the world is not a courtroom.... And so what if the item had been true? Journalists routinely withhold the truth from their readers for all sorts of reasons. They don't reveal the names of "good and...

Per Fox News...

LANCASTER, Pa. - Tristan Egolf, a political activist and author whose first novel at age 27 won him comparisons to William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, has died. He was 33. Egolf died May 7 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a Lancaster apartment, said G. Gary Kirchner, Lancaster County coroner. Egolf had shown signs of depression over the past 18 months, said Michael Hoober, a family therapist in Lancaster and friend of Egolf. "He pushed the envelope wherever he went," Hoober said. "His creativity was always right in front of him, but somewhere in there it started to fall apart."...