Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
Light posting today. Go read this. A look at the origins of Iran's reformist movement.
The confrontation between the reform movement and the conservative establishment that has dominated Iranian politics over the past six years is regarded by many political analysts as having reached a watershed. The refusal of hard-line clerics who control the commanding heights of government to allow further reforms, coupled with President Mohammed Khatami's reluctance to confront the clerical establishment, has led some to predict the rise of a "third force" in Iranian politics - the disaffected public, particularly the youth - and the eventual demise of the regime.
One problem with this type of analysis is that it ignores the essentially elitist nature of the reform movement and exaggerates grassroots pressures for reforms. This so-called "third force" is too amorphous and fractured to buttress even the broadest reform coalition.
The reform movement in Iran is less an outgrowth of popular disenchantment than a reconfiguration of factional politics in the Islamic Republic. While most informed observers are well aware that the most prominent leaders of reform in Iran are products of the Islamic system, it is generally overlooked that most hail from its most sensitive and secret branches - the security and intelligence community. This reformist elite has forged its overall strategy outside the realm of public scrutiny and is not directly influenced by the disenchanted masses.
The good Captain discusses how the victory in Iraq needs to be exploited to change the historical mindset of victimhood that holds down Arab modernization. And why allowing the UN and the other "multilateralists" to take over the rebuilding of Iraq would lead to failure. I think he leaves out another important mindset that will be defeated should America go on to lead Iraq to a tolerant modern Statehood. Anti-Americanism.
France, Russia, China, the other failed Arab states and the UN want to get in on the rebuilding of Iraq and make sure the US/UK alliance doesn't have the primary role. Why? If we do rebuild Iraq and do a good job and they turn into a beacon of hope for other Arabs and the Iranians it will prove America right. It will prove, in a manner that the media cannot diminish, that we are benevolent and the system we represent is the best and that the American government, under a Republican no less, is a force for good. If they can get the UN bureaucracy in there to retard any positive advances and keep the Iraqis in a perpetual purgatory-like stste of misery, like they do the Palestinians, they can keep poking at the open wound in Iraq and saying it is all the fault of imperialist evil America. It would be used as a cudgel to beat us into submission now and forever more.
So, not only are Arab despots trying to keep Iraq from being successful for fear of the example it would serve. Going beyond the Arab culture of dwelling on the past century of abject failure this is a fight against the even deeper illness of anti-Americanism. Success in rebuilding Iraq and changing the Middle East based on strong confident American leadership could well be a fatal blow to the forces that want to bind us down and suborn the American Constitution to the UN Charter. It would prove that independent action among a group of nations, with America in the lead, is more capable of bringing stability and peace than all of the UN's Resolutions. It is a fight for the very foundations of the Transnational Progressive agenda.
Norbert Vollertsen, the German doctor doing everything he can to aid the people of North Korea escape from Kim's oppression. For this he lives his life on the run.
Norbert Vollertsen is worried.
He is worried about being expelled by South Korea. He is worried about being assassinated by North Korean agents. And he worries about the Chinese Government.
He moves around, from internet café, to internet café, city hall to tea room.
"Better not stay in any one place too long," he says.
He has some words that should be remembered. For all those who have seen first hand the murder and crushing inhumanity of regimes like Castro's, Kim's, Saddam's, Mugabe's, China's and others, yet remain silent.
"You know about German history. We failed to act when we found out about the Jews and the concentration camps. I do not want to make the same mistake twice.
"What shall I tell my own boys? That I knew about crimes against humanity but went back to Germany, lived under nice conditions and forgot about the starving conditions. No, I will not do that."
And what wil Eason Jordan tell his children? "Once I knew everything was nice and safe I came out from under my covers and spoke out?"
Just wait and things there will change. Just open "dialogues" and understand their differences, right?
"I will never forget the eyes of the children who were dying. They cannot cry any more. They cannot laugh any more. They have no emotional reaction. They have no hope."
Former dissidents in the Czech Republic are protesting Castro's murderous reign.
On April 16, a who's who of former political dissidents and current lawmakers joined about 100 protesters in front of the Cuban Embassy in Prague 6.
The protesters voiced their opposition to Cuba's arrests of almost 80 alleged dissidents. Those arrested included writers, independent journalists and opposition-party leaders. Most have received prison sentences ranging between 18 and 25 years.
"We express sympathy with the Cuban people," said local actor Tomas Hanak.
The demonstrators outside the Cuban Embassy carried photos of many of the arrested and also denounced the recent execution of three Cuban men who attempted to hijack a ferry and sail it to the United States. The men were put in front of a firing squad less than 24 hours after they were caught.
The protest participants included Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandr Vondra, former Civic Democratic Deputy Marek Benda, Freedom Union Deputy Ivan Pilip and Jan Bubenik, an activist in the 1989 revolution. Pilip and Bubenik were arrested in Cuba in 2001 for allegedly meeting with anti-revolutionary groups and spent almost a month in prison before their release was negotiated.
"The law being used is the same one we were prosecuted for," Pilip told the crowd. "Any kind of action [in Cuba] can be seen as an enemy action."
President Vaclav Klaus issued a separate statement in which he said he was worried about Cuba's politically motivated court proceedings.
"The Czech Republic should use all opportunities possible to express its disagreement with the human rights abuses in Cuba and together with the U.S. Congress and the European Union should support the enforcement of adequate measures to stop the persecution of those who are in accordance with the Cuban constitution," the statement read.
Even in Paris, Reporters Sans Frontiers held a rally at the Cuban Embassy. Where protestors were beated by Embassy staff.
A dozen Reporters Without Borders protesters were attacked by Cuban embassy staff today after the ambassador refused to accept a letter demanding the release of 26 journalists recently imprisoned for up to 27 years. Cuba has now overtaken Eritrea, Burma and China as the world's biggest prison for journalists.
After the refusal, the protesters chained shut the entrances to the embassy and handcuffed themselves to the railings outside. Embassy staff then beat up the organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard, and the head of its Latin America desk, Régis Bourgeat.
The demonstrators wore masks and t-shirts bearing pictures of the journalists and carried two banners, one reading "Cuba = prison" and the other showing a quote by one of the jailed journalists, Raúl Rivero, saying : "I don't plot, I write."
Among those who came to express support for the jailed journalists were Cuban writers Zoé Valdès and Eduardo Manet, Spanish playwright and filmmaker Fernando Arrabal, French film director Romain Goupil and French novelist Pascal Bruckner.
I don't know. I would say that it is a bad sign for relations when you have to go to Tehran and meet with Rafsanjani (you know, the guy who says that the day Iran has a nuclear weapon is the day that Israel ceases to exist. So much for that 'right of return', eh? Because obviously the man cares very deeply about the Palestinians.) to announce that you are still an ally and friend of America.
French Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin said at a press conference here on Wednesday night, referring to his country's differences of opinion on Iraq crisis, "We are still the United States' friend and ally."
Well, that thing they feared has come, but it is by no means an “occupation.” And people everywhere should refrain from calling it that unless, of course, it becomes evident that it is one, both de facto and with regards to its intent.
Although American officials have not formally stated that the war is over, what we are witnessing now are the very beginnings of a post-war Iraq. And it is nonsensical, absurd, and preposterous that Arabs are already calling for American troops to leave Iraq, when their job is not yet even done. In a way, the US is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t. If America were to leave Iraq immediately (and it won’t), Arabs would be quick to raise the allegation that the US never cared about the Iraqi people, that it did not stay long enough to change the humanitarian situation on the ground there, that it did not implement the democratic and economic reform it claimed it wanted to bring the people of Iraq, and that it came to the Middle East with the sole intention of destroying a defiant Arab country which posed a challenge to the West (and as we have seen, not much of a challenge, at that). If America stays on, though (and it will), Arabs, as they are today, will be quick to launch into their conspiracy theories of American “domination,” “subjugation,” “imperialism,” “colonialism,” and “expansionism.”
But the facts speak for themselves. Many, if not most, elements of Saddam Hussein’s regime have yet to be found. Officials have no idea where Saddam himself is right now. America has yet to find him (or his remains) and the suspected illegal weapons of mass destruction to which American intelligence pointed and upon which coalition forces acted: the chemical and biological weapons laboratories, and the snthrax, the botulinum, and the Sarin and VX nerve agents, among others. And that’s just the investigatory part. The US will not, and should not, leave before that is done.
America went into all of this with the intent to change Iraq once and for all, to bring democratic reform to its citizens, and to welcome all of its inhabitants, Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, and Christian, back into the international community. And it’s about time. Too long have the Iraqi people been the victims of their own brutal dictator and too long has their plight been ignored by the international community. Ironically, if Arabs had it their way, to this day the Iraqi people would remain oppressed and subjugated.
And then this from the article. An insight into the pride in their mission that American soldiers have. How many Western scribblers and TV babblers understood this? Only the ones who understand pride in doign a job well and pride in representing a great nation.
Coalition forces are liberating the Iraqi people today and Iraqis are thankful for that. (The Arab news media would rather repeat the few instances an American flag was waved by a happy American soldier with a sense of purpose and pride in his duty, though.)
Another reminder of what crushing dissent really means. Hint, it is not being disinvited to a party or being booed off stage or having sales of your book/cd/movie tank.
Today's seen the second national strike there in under a month - this one organised by the country's largest union. The last one, organised by the opposition MDC group shut down an estimated 80 per cent of industry and became one of the largest protests against Mugabe's 23-year rule.
But it also led to the death of Tonderai Machiridza: an MDC supporter who died because of the severity of the beating he was given when he was arrested a few days later. We spoke to him before his death.
Just 24-hours after these pictures were taken, Tonderai Machiridza was dead. He had, it is alleged, been beaten by armed police. With booted feet, truncheons and handcuffs. In whatever way they were sustained, his injuries were severe. More severe than anyone realised at the time.
At the headquarters of Zimbabwe's opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, Tonderai gave permission for the filming. He wanted to be interviewed.
He said that 25 policemen came to his house in the night and assaulted both him and his wife. They accused him, he said, of burning a Marco Polo bus.
Three other MDC members were arrested at the same time - they, too, wanted their injuries shown. This film was this morning secretly flown out of Harare.
Tonderai's beating and death is not an isolated case. The MDC claims that 600 of its supporters have been tortured in police custody this year - although those figures cannot be verified.
The "dissidents" here in America who think they are brve for "telling it like it is" about the Bush "junta" need to get a grip on reality. When you face oppression like this you can tell me about how the US is a fascist terrorist state.
Castro's thugs are very proud that democracy and the voice of the people of Cuba have been crushed. And in fact, they are bragging about what a thorough job was done. Hello, Oliver Stone? Spielberg? Anyone have anything to say?
An undercover Cuban agent credited with giving some of the most damaging courtroom evidence against dissidents said the island's opposition movement has been shattered.
"The opposition is finished, it has ended, it will never lift its head again," Aleida de las Mercedes Godinez told the Associated Press.
"The opposition will never flourish again -- never!"
Monday's interview with Godinez was the first in a series of government-organized interviews the agents are giving to the international media.
The families of some of the 75 dissidents who were quickly convicted and sentenced to jail earlier this month acknowledged the severe damage caused by the undercover agents, particularly Godinez.
She was a key leader of a coalition called the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society and had been allied with the dissidents since 1994, sometimes working even as an independent journalist.
Godinez provided a rare glimpse inside Castro's intelligence network and demonstrated just how deeply loyal his agents were. She said she never felt any remorse or sorrow for her work even though she worked with some dissidents for years.
"Marta Beatriz was an objective of my mission," she said. "I could never be friends with a counter-revolutionary."
Of course the Hollywood elite will say it is America's fault for going and giving the Cuban dissidents ideas about freedom and human rights and living a life without fear of saying the wrong thing. In that case I don't want to hear a single one of those hypocrites complain about "black-lists" "McCarthyism" or their rights. Their own whining about reprisals is a sick joke when compared to what the people of Cuba who speak their minds face. This is the regime and system they so admire, let them go live in it. I will trade a Hollywood leftist for every one of the 75 dissidents locked away to rot in Castro's dungeons.
Did South Korea try to block the UNHRC from discussing a human rights abuses in North Korea?
Ra Jong-yil, the senior Blue House adviser for national security, said yesterday that he worked last year to keep the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from putting the North Korean human rights issues on its agenda.
Mr. Ra was Korea's ambassador to the United Kingdom in the Kim Dae-jung administration at the time.
He told the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee, "At that time, our priority was to create an environment for improving rights there in the future, not demanding immediate changes. We believed that if North Korean human rights issues were dealt with publicly, it would lead to a worsening of human rights and a security crisis," he said.
North Korea is the worst human rights abuser in the world. How could it be worse? To not discuss it because it may upset Kim to hear what a brutal murderer he is? It would be better to hide it and allow Kim to go on murdering, starving and imprisoning the entire population of North Korea in hopes that privately we can get him to change his ways?
For a day, U.S. Marines traded their rifles for rakes — to care for the final resting places of British soldiers who fought and died in another campaign, more than 80 years ago.
The graves of World War I soldiers at Kut War Cemetery were overgrown with tall weeds. No one has cared for them since before the 1991 Gulf War when Britain closed its embassy in Iraq.
After U.S. Marines were told of the cemetery by British journalists, more than enough volunteers stepped forward Monday to help pull the weeds and gather trash.
“It’s the best way to show support to our British allies and friends, and their support means a lot to us,” said Navy Yeoman 2nd Class Daniel White of West Valley City, Utah, one of the Construction Battalion engineers who helped clear the plots.
Children had been using the cemetery’s open field to play soccer, while other residents dumped their garbage there. Nearby is the city’s main market, where open sewers run in narrow canals between stalls selling Syrian chocolate, Iraqi-made cigarettes and live chickens.
The sign marking the cemetery was covered with graffiti, and an iron cross that once adorned the obelisk in the middle of the grounds was removed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Its whereabouts are unknown.
Broken gravestones litter the grounds; some near the entrance have been stacked together to form a makeshift bench. The tombstone of Lance Cpl. H.J. Gentry, of the Middlesex Regiment, lies amid a sloping mountain of trash that residents had thrown into the cemetery from a nearby alley. He died Oct. 13, 1918.
Other gravestones are inscribed in Sanskrit, tribute to the Indian troops who fought alongside the British in the Mesopotamian campaign.
On Monday, Marine Capt. Peter Charboneau was marking the names and locations of gravestones on a makeshift map. Local Iraqis, some wearing the Marines’ chemical weapons gloves as gardening gloves, were helping out for $2 apiece.
“We would like this to be a place of rest,” said Charboneau, of Ticonderoga, N.Y., a controller with Marine Air Support Squadron 1. He assured residents that U.S. forces would find another place for the children to play soccer.
Hussein Kadem Zambul, a math teacher who lives across the street, said the vandalism and neglect were not indicators of any anti-Christian sentiment.
“Islam is not against Christianity. We have one God,” he said.
He said the town’s impoverished people had taken some stone and other materials from the cemetery out of dire need under Saddam’s harsh rule.
“How do you expect the government to care for graves when it treated the people like animals?” he asked.
The businessman who acted as George Galloway's intermediary in Baghdad was arrested as the war began and held incommunicado for 30 days by Jordanian intelligence officers, it emerged yesterday.
The arrest of Fawaz Zureikat followed a raid on his offices in Amman by Dairat al Muk-habarat, the Jordanian secret service, which seized documents, accounts, and computer disks relating to his businesses and political activities.
Mr Zureikat, a Jordanian, was released shortly before a confidential memorandum was unearthed in Baghdad's looted foreign ministry. It alleges that Mr Galloway had received £375,000 a year in pay-offs from the Iraqi government.
"The Zionist occupation is terrorism. If this cabinet resists and makes war against the occupation, we will welcome it, but if this cabinet makes war against the mujahedeen, we will not welcome it," Abdelaziz al-Rantissi told AFP, using the Arabic term for holy warriors.
In other words. Try to make peace with Israel and we will kill you.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday said that because the United Nations was incapable of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war, the United States should continue looking for them now.
The elderly Iraqi farmer who, according to Baghdad officials, literally shot his way to fame by downing a state-of-the-art US Apache helicopter with an old carbine has flatly denied he had anything to do with the crash.
Minqash told the paper that he had come across the aircraft in his field early one morning.
"I didn't shoot down an Apache or anything else. All that happened was that I went to the field, as I usually do early in the morning, and was surprised to find some bodies on the ground.
"I began to rub my eyes to make sure that what I was seeing was true or whether I was imagining it," he said.
"When I realised that it was really true, I was overcome by fear and rushed to the nearest government post to inform them that there was a plane in my field.
"A large number of [Ba'ath] party members and security men came with me to investigate. They told me that it was an American Apache aircraft and made me stay with them until someone who they said was a senior official arrived. I didn't know who he was.
"They asked me to say what you have heard on the TV satellite channels - that I shot down the plane with an old gun, a Brno."
She met her husband on the road to war-torn Baghdad.Army Sgt. Teresa DeWitt-Huff - who grew up in Maine - called her mom in Eastport this weekend to let her know she had managed to meet up with her husband of five years after both had shipped out separately with their respective units.
DeWitt-Huff, 27, was already in Iraq when she learned that her husband, Sgt. Eric Huff, 27, and his 4th Forward Support Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, had shipped out, too.
Last week, she saw his unit and went looking for him. She found him sitting in the back of a U.S. Army truck.
On Easter Sunday, the daughter called her mom, Gwen Lujan, back in Eastport with the news.
Another $112,000,000 found by US forces at a Ba'athist residence. But of course it was all the American (in this case we are to ignore the UN's support) sanctions that was causing the deaths of all those Iraqi children. Right?
How compromised were the UN inspection teams of Hans Blix?
Revelations by some Iraqi researchers indicate the Iraqi government may have had advance notice of supposedly surprise visits by U-N weapons inspectors.
Researchers at three Baghdad institutions say they were ordered to destroy some bacteria and equipment before the inspectors checked their facilities.
At the time, many inspectors complained privately that Iraqis appeared to have been tipped off about the visits.
All the researchers say their experiments were harmless and unrelated to weapons development. But they say they were told to destroy some bacteria and hide others in order to avoid problems with inspectors.
Ahhh yes, our Internationalist Elite, assure us that Iran is a place of peace and understanding. It is just that us simplistic and ignorant American cowboys cannot understand the nuance in stories like this
Iranian actress Gohar Kheirandish, who had once kissed a male filmmaker on a public podium, has been sentenced
to 74 lashes but the punishment will remain suspended, press said Tuesday.
The punishment was issued by a court in the central desert city of Yazd, where Kheirandish, in her 50s, had kissed Ali Zamani on the forehead and shook his hand in November while receiving a prize at a ceremony.
See, we are not good post-modern relativists so we just can't understand that this is something we should just accept as part of their culture. Criticising it would just prove what racist imperialists we are.
France needs a new law to reassert secular values in its state schools against growing radical Islamic trends among Muslim pupils and a related rise in anti-Semitism, Education Minister Luc Ferry said on Tuesday.
Ferry said France, home to Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities, faced unprecedented challenges from a new anti-Semitism fed by Muslim radicals rather than far-right bigots who traditionally supported anti-Jewish views.
Hmmm, he leaves out the far-left bigots who turn out to support those Muslim Radicals, though.
There are some other things that still elude Ferry.
''We have to reaffirm very strongly the principles of republican secularism against the rise of 'communitarism', racism and anti-Semitism,'' Ferry told Europe 1 radio. ''That requires a new law,'' he said, adding he would introduce one next year.
Yes, yes. Another law banning hatred of Jews and supporting our "republican secularism" should do the trick. Try enforcing what you have on the books already.
I was wrong, he does bring up the left-wing. In the form of teachers and unquestioning support for Palestinians.
Ferry said anti-Semitism, which official reports say grew sharply last year, was spreading because of growing Islamic radicalism and the lax attitude of left-wing teachers who openly sympathised with the Palestinians against Israel.
''There is such leniency towards the Palestinian cause that they tolerate anti-Semitic insults not for the motives that inspire the far right'' but out of sympathy for victims, he said.
Those kinds of comments could get him fired. I willl be eagerly waiting to see what comes of this. It could turn into a battle to save France. But how many voices will side with Ferry. Not the far-left or the far-right or many of those 5,000,000 Muslims.
The Socialist leaning politicians in America who assure us that over-regulation will end corporate corruption and always shout "Enron" in place of "racist" as a debate closer need to explain how even more regulations would have prevented the Elf fiasco in France. This was a state owned company in one of the most regulated markets in the world.
Last week Elf's former president, 59 year-old Loik Le Floch-Prigent, explained in painstaking detail how he won the approval of the late Socialist president Francois Mitterrand to use the equivalent of five million euros ($5,45-million) of company money to pay for his divorce.
Realising in 1991 that he could no longer live with his wife Fatima Belaid -- who he believed possessed a number of sensitive secrets about the conduct of Elf affairs -- Le Floch-Prigent went to see his political patron at the Elysee palace.
"I told (Mitterrand), 'I am probably going to divorce my wife and that could have repercussions given her character. We made a lot of trips to Africa together and the collateral damage could be significant for the country and Elf,'" he told the court on Tuesday.
Mitterrand then refused his offer to resign and instead told him, "You must sort out the problem" which Le Floch-Prigent took as authority to buy his wife's silence with Elf cash.
The story was revealing of the climate of easy money at the then publicly-owned company, which after eight years of investigations and the accumulation of 250 volumes of evidence is now at the centre of a mammoth four-month trial featuring a total of 37 accused.
At the heart of the case is the charge that Le Floch-Prigent and two other top executives Alfred Sirven, 76, and Andre Tarallo (75) creamed off millions of euros for themselves from the secret accounts that Elf ran in Switzerland and elsewhere for the purpose of buying influence and contracts.
But the evidence used to substantiate this has itself shed light on practices which at the time -- just 10 years ago -- were apparently regarded as acceptable by French governments of all hues and continued till Elf's privatisation in 1994. It is now part of TotalFinaElf.
Chief among these was the bribery of African leaders in order to exploit oil-fields and extend French influence on the continent.
Tarallo -- who was known as Elf's Mr Africa because of his contacts there -- has told the court that he was asked by President Omar Bongo of Gabon to put money into Swiss accounts as an insurance policy against his possible fall from power.
Sirven has also admitted enriching himself from accounts he set up on behalf of the former president of Congo, Pascal Lissouba.
The court has also heard from Le Floch-Prigent and Sirven confirmation of long-standing rumours that money from the secret acounts financed French political parties as well as candidates for the presidency.
Sirven said that he himself "took personal charge of things of this nature," and Le Floch-Prigent said that when he took over as Elf president in 1989 he was asked by Mitterrand to "balance things out" so that the Socialists benefitted as well as the Gaullists of France's current president Jacques Chirac.
Roland Dumas, Mitterrand's foreign minister who was himself acquitted in a related corruption trial, said Elf had become a "cash-cow. Its capital was used to reward African heads of state, but also -- one thing leading to another -- to bail out certain empty coffers."
Government officials are in just as deep as the company officials. This is something the regulation-lovers here in America don't like to talk about. By their reasoning we cannot trust private companies to do the right thing but the government, especially an un-elected bureacracy, can be trusted always and without question. While free-market economics is debatable, I admit, the other side doen't accept that the Socialist model has proven itself even worse and that in the places where some form of Socialism has worked, realities on the ground and American economic strength as guarantor have been more important to success than over-regulation and Socialist market restrictions. It is something that runs deeper and moral-relativists don't like to face it but it is time to set a standard for ethics and the understanding of right and wrong and the acceptance of responsibility for failure or wrongdoing.
Every day we "let the inspections work" this would have continued. When the nay-sayers continue to say nay, remind them of this.
Monday and Wednesday were execution day for Saddam Hussein's political opponents at his most notorious jail -- regular as clockwork, with no let up until just a week before war.
"Most weeks they would come with bodies, sometimes one, sometimes 10," said Mohammed Alaa, the old man who dug the graves in which they lie nameless, marked just by a number on a yellow metal plate.
In nearly 1,000 graves, a walled enclosure at the back of the Islamic cemetery on the edge of the small town of Abu Ghraib has hidden its victims for years. Only the dead were allowed in.
Rasul Abeid, who read verses from the Koran as the bodies were buried, could offer little help.
"They were all political prisoners. The security officials gave us the number and we followed orders. Only they have records of who they are," he said. "It started in the 1980s and the last one that came was 10 days before the war."
Some relatives say the Americans now have the lists, but with the looting and chaos that followed Saddam's fall, little is clear -- and it could stay that way.
Gravedigger Alaa said the burials were shrouded in secrecy.
"The security men would bring them, no one else was allowed to come near. Sometimes they had kept the bodies so long they were decomposed, just in pieces," he said.
Macedonia's parliament on Tuesday approved the deployment of a 40-member contingent of soldiers and paramedics to join U.S.-led peacekeeping operations in Iraq.
The move was passed with 86 votes in favor, while the remaining lawmakers in the 120-seat assembly were absent during the vote.
The contingent will consist of 28 soldiers from an elite regiment, two liaison officers and three teams of paramedics.
They are due to leave for Kuwait in a month and will be under U.S. command.
"Although symbolic in number, the Macedonian contribution will be important as part of a major mission to build a new democracy and peace in Iraq," Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski said.
Post war rebuilding of Iraq is underway while the Axis-of-Talkers do nothing but tell us how important they are.
Reporters who were embedded are starting to talk about what they learned.
What's the face of the Iraq war? Is it a scene of physical destruction people see on their televisions and in their newspapers? Is it a glimpse of sullen -- more often relieved -- Iraqi prisoners or celebrating civilians? Or is it the wave of camouflaged U.S. troops routing an enemy, and in typical American fashion, then embracing the children of a foe vanquished?
It's all that and more.
For journalists embedded with U.S. forces, the dominant feature of Operation Iraqi Freedom is, and always will be, the faces of individual Marines, soldiers, airmen or sailors with whom they lived, sweated and feared during the long slog to Baghdad.
Leuthe, Davis, Shevlin, Washburn, Malley, Lockett, Jones, Moll, Lyon, Bishop, Avilos, Nolan, Lockett, Meldoza, Craft, George -- the list of names of the men who did themselves proud, the Marines proud and their nation proud is too long to recite. There were more than 180 in the company; more than 200 when you add in attachments, such as armored vehicle crews and additional Navy corpsmen.
They were a cross-section of America. There were whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians and every hue and mixture in between. Pvt. Dustin Pangelinann, 23, was from Saipan in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Marianas. Fifteen members of Bravo Company were not U.S. citizens and represented the newest wave of immigrants to our country. Some were from Mexico and one was from Haiti. There were also several from Russia and Ukraine.
Some came from poor backgrounds, others were solidly middle class. One Marine, who didn't need to work because of a family fortune, enlisted in his late 20s in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
And yes, some even had had youthful brushes with the law.
But they all shared two things. They were Marines and "Devil Dogs." Not hyphenated Marines, just Marines -- the "Few and the Proud," carrying on the tradition of courage their regimental forebears showed at Bellieu Wood and the Argonne, at Guadalcanal and Okinawa, at the Chosen Reservoir and Inchon, and at Hue.
"None of you had to be here," company commander Capt. Jason Smith told his men before crossing the border berm into Iraq from Kuwait. "You all chose to be here by becoming Marines, by doing something good for the world.
"Take a look around you. We are all different ... what other military force or country in the world can say that? The fact that we are all different and live with each other and focus together under adverse circumstances tells me and the world a lot."
This group of men, this collection of Marines, he said, comes from a nation that "is going to war to defend an idea" of freedom, rule of law and human dignity. "We're going to war to make the world a better place because we don't want to happen again what happened on Sept. 11."
I think so many of the reporters figured out that the men and women in our military are there for the right reasons and that they understand their mission and America's place in the world. They aren't brainwashed fools doing the bidding to expand a new empire. Hopefully they will remember what they learned when they go on reporting in the future.
Halfway between Baghdad and the Iranian border, amid thousands of acres of rice fields, is a small village where a statue of Saddam Hussein was recently toppled and the residents are enjoying their first weeks of freedom.
On a dirt road 50 feet from a babbling stream is a two-story house where a picture of a young Iraqi soldier - missing for nearly a decade - hangs proudly above the television set.
Saturday afternoon, the soldier returned to the village of his birth with a new label affixed to his camouflage - U.S. Marine.
"This is the best day of my life," said Mohammed-Nehmai Arkawazi as he stood among his mother, three brothers, sister and scores of friends for the first time since 1994.
That is when he fled Iraq after repeated imprisonments and torture. His crime: speaking out against Saddam's regime.
Arkawazi, 39, was born and reared in Iraq and, like most young Iraqis, served involuntarily in the Iraqi army. He fought in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s but left the war disillusioned with his country.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, during which Iraqi forces were pushed out of Kuwait by an American-led coalition, Arkawazi spoke out against a government he saw as ultimately self-defeating and corrupt. For his perceived sedition he was imprisoned six times and tortured more times than he can remember.
"Life was not easy," Arkawazi said. "Everyone was scared to speak, but I could not be silenced."
So he bid his family and friends farewell and left for Syria. From there he moved on to Lebanon and Cyprus, and finally settled in the United States.
Col. John Pomfret, who coordinated Saturday's reunion, said Arkawazi and his fellow FIFs were integral to the swift coalition victory.
"When we took civilian casualties, he was there talking to them and telling them help was on the way," Pomfret said. "In some places, he helped start electricity and water."
Saturday afternoon, after a two-hour drive from Baghdad, Arkawazi received a hero's welcome. His mother trembled in joy, and his best friend wept as the two hugged.
Neighbors and friends flooded Arkawazi's home, and soon more than 50 people were buzzing about the house, porch and front yard.
"When I left, everyone was small and now they are so big," Arkawazi said. "I am just too happy."
A neighbor who spoke near-perfect English took the opportunity to talk about her country's condition.
"We were suffering for such a long time," said Rabab Ali.
Ali expressed satisfaction at the regime's collapse at the hands of the American-led coalition.
"We are grateful to George Bush and Tony Blair because they are peacemakers," Ali said. "If I had the money, I would build a statue of George Bush because he saved us all."
After Ali's comments, a white tablecloth was spread across the concrete floor and plates full of bright red tomatoes, dark green cucumbers and fresh fire-roasted lamb and boiled chicken were served along with flat oven-cooked bread.
Ice-cold bottles of orange soda washed down a feast for the roughly 30 people, including about a dozen Marines who were treated like family.
"Whenever the Marines of America ask, I will be there to help," Arkawazi said with a wide smile as he rode back toward Baghdad and his responsibilities with the Marines.
Canadian soldiers are pretty disappointed at not being a part of the liberation and disarming of Iraq.
"It was hard, very disappointing," said Lieut. Tim Portello, 31. "I felt a little bit ashamed to watch my British and American brothers having a hard go and doing the deed.
"A lot of us who have been in the military a few years have good friends in the British and American armies who we trained with. It will be hard to look them in the eye now and know that we weren't there with them."
Many of the Canadians were expecting to be linked with the same U.S. 101st Airborne Division troops who fought alongside members of the Princess Particia's Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan last year.
Sgt.-Maj. Carl Deroche, 40, said the experience was "very frustrating."
"We let the side down - that's the feeling we get," said Deroche, who has served five overseas tours during more than 23 years in the army, including the first Gulf War when his unit was attached to British forces.
"We see eye-to-eye. We've broken bread together. We've trained together."
Some soldiers suspect they may end up keeping the peace in Iraq instead.
Portello and Deroche say that would only be worse.
"That would almost be like a kick in the pants, really, to go there now that it's all relatively safe and tidied up - now that someone else has done the dirty work," said Portello, a 10-year veteran from Guelph, Ont.
Added Deroche: "I would go where I was asked to go, but I would feel like we missed the show, we missed our chance."
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