"US Soldiers Started to Shoot Us, One by One"

Rory McCarthy, The Guardian

Survivors describe wedding massacre as generals refuse to apologise

The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young
bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema
Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the
sky above.

"William H. Hinton (1919–2004)

John Mage, Monthly Review

William H. Hinton died in the early morning of Saturday, 15th of May. 2004. He was born in Chicago in 1919. At the age of 17 he worked his way to the Far East. Without money, he supported himself by washing dishes, and then got a job for six months as a reporter on an English language newspaper in Japan. He continued his travels by way of Japanese occupied Korea and Northeast China, then through the USSR to Poland and Germany, and finally returned to the United States by working as a deckhand on an American freighter.

"Sex, Lies, and Videotapes"

John Chuckman

Among the hoard of pictures from Iraq viewed by members of America's Senate in a top-secret, eavesdrop-proof room — a rather grandiose version of one of those smelly little, stained booths for which patrons of Times Square shops used to pay to watch "hot stuff" — were pictures of a young female soldier, already recognized worldwide for her smiling-Nazi poses with abused prisoners, having sex with a gang of fellow soldiers.

One of the exalted Senator spectators, with all the dignity he could summon, was quoted, "She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual. Almost everyone was naked all the time."

"Did Bush Sacrifice Nick Berg?"

Yoshie Furuhashi

Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg who was executed by an Islamist militant group in Iraq, speaks to Robin Young of Here and Now, a radio program on WBUR Boston (click on the link to listen to the Berg interview). Nick Berg was in Iraq helping rebuild broadcast towers. Then, on March 24, 2004, Nick was detained by the Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul and taken into US military custody with no due process. The FBI came to interview Michael on March 31.

Michael says that the FBI suspected Nick of being — of all things — "an insurgent" or "a terrorist." Michael had to file a lawsuit, naming Donald Rumsfeld as the responsible party, in federal court in Philadelphia on April 5 to have Nick released on April 6, even though the FBI had already recommended Nick's release shortly after March 31.