All Aircraft Are Not Involved

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Outraged Iraqi officials demanded an investigation into an early morning U.S. military raid Friday near the birthplace of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, saying the operation violated the terms of the handover of Karbala province to Iraqi security forces.

Karbala Gov. Oqeil al Khazaali said U.S. forces killed an unarmed civilian and arrested at least one person in the raid in the southern town of Janaja. The governor's brother, Hassanein al Khazaali, said late Friday that the Iraqi killed in the operation was a relative of the U.S.-backed prime minister.....

United States Army forces buried alive scores of Iraqi soldiers in their trenches in the early hours of the allied ground attack that ended the Persian Gulf war, Army commanders said this week.

The deaths took place during the operation in which American M1-A1 tanks of the First Infantry Division cut lanes through a 10-mile-wide stretch of barbed wire, minefields, bunkers and trenches north of the Iraqi-Saudi Arabian border on Feb. 24 as the allied ground offensive unfolded.

Army officials said the Iraqi soldiers who died remained in their trenches as plow-equipped tanks dumped tons of earth and sand onto them, filling the trenches to insure that they could not be used as cover from which to fire on allied units that were poised to pour through the gaps. Avoiding Hand-to-Hand Combat

The Army said it knew the operation would kill Iraqis who did not surrender or otherwise get out of the way, but said the tactic spared the lives of American soldiers who would have had to leave the safety of their armored vehicles and fight Iraqi troops hand to hand in the trenches.

"People somehow have the notion that burying guys alive is nastier than blowing them up with hand grenades or sticking them in gut with bayonets," said Col. Lon Maggart. "Well it's not."

Colonel Maggart, commander of one of two brigades that led assaults on a key line of Iraqi defenses, said in a telephone interview from Fort Riley, Kan., that between 80 and 250 Iraqis had been buried alive. Army officials said the First Infantry's experiences had been the only incidents of live burials during the war.

At a news conference here on Thursday, the Pentagon spokesman, Pete Williams, defended the tactic and said it did not violate the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare. "I don't mean to be flippant, but there's no nice way to kill somebody in war," Mr. Williams said.

The disclosure of the live burials, which were first reported in Newsday this week, seems likely to add to the debate about how forthcoming the Pentagon has been in providing details about the toll suffered by the Iraqi Army at the hands of American forces.

Army officials strongly denied any attempts to hide the breaching operation, and pointed out that senior commanders had given extensive interviews about the maneuver after the war.

Journalists in combat pools were assigned to the First Infantry during the breaching operation, but none of their reports mentioned the live burials. In fact, the reports noted that few slain Iraqis had been visible in the bunkers and trenches.

The Pentagon has provided no official estimate of Iraq's overall casualties. The Defense Intelligence Agency issued a heavily qualified analysis in June estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had been killed and 300,000 wounded in the war but said the figures had a 50 percent margin of error.....

"This stems from a long-term public corruption investigation," FBI spokesman Scott Wilson said. "The warrants are sealed through the court, and basically, I cannot comment on anything that's being searched or seized."

A teacher who posted photographs on the internet of schools which collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake has been sent to a labour camp for a year, a rights group said yesterday.

Liu Shaokun was ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour", according to Human Rights in China. The system does not require a charge or criminal trial and is not subject to court appeals. He is believed to be the third person held after questioning why so many schools were destroyed in the earthquake...

Three die in plane collision near Rock Springs
August 10th, 2008 @ 11:00pm
By John Hollenhorst

A deadly accident claimed three lives in southwestern Wyoming Sunday. It's the third fatal plane crash in our area in three days, and it leaves many questions unanswered.

Wyoming investigators have released very few details about the incident, other than the obvious: Two planes collided, exploded in flames, and fell to Earth. All three people aboard the two planes are dead.

Debris rained down on a rugged area just 5 miles from Rock Springs. It's an oil and gas field just north of Interstate 80.

"A number of people who called in were actually on the interstate in vehicles and called in, observed what they called an explosion in the sky," said Detective Dick Blust, with the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office.

The mid-air collision involved two private planes just 5 miles from the Rock Springs-Sweetwater County Airport. All three people aboard apparently died almost instantly.

"There was a tremendous amount of damage. The wreckage was severely damaged by fire, and it's scattered out over quite a large area," Blust said.

A large, colored parachute was visible in the wreckage. It's not the type someone would use to bail out. It's a bigger chute designed to save an entire plane. "When an engine or an aircraft parachute deploys, the descent of the aircraft is slowed down," Blust explained.

A source in Salt Lake told us one of the planes was on approach to the Rock Springs airport. It was reportedly being handled by an air traffic controller in Salt Lake. Wyoming officials won't release details until they confirm identities of the three victims and notify relatives.

Some relatives did show up at the airport, which suggests the three victims are from the Rock Springs area. "There's information that's brought them here, but we're still working on making the official identifications," Blust said.

The FAA is now reporting that the plane on approach was a Cirrus SR22 that took off from was approaching the Rock Springs airport from Polson, Montana. That aircraft does contain a parachute.

The other plane was a Cessna 172 with a student pilot practicing near the airport.

Federal investigators arrived Sunday night and will be at the crash scene Monday.

This was the third plane crash in three days. Saturday two people from Washington state died when their plane crashed at Bear Lake. On Friday, Blanding lost two of its city council members and another community leader in a crash near the Monticello airport.

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: August 20, 2008

BEIJING — In the annals of people who have struggled against Communist Party rule, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying are unlikely to merit even a footnote.


Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Wang Xiuying, left, and Wu Dianyuan have been ordered to undergo “re-education” for seeking a protest permit in Beijing.

The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth.

But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.

They became the most recent examples of people punished for submitting applications to protest. A few would-be demonstrators have simply disappeared, at least for the duration of the Games, squelching already diminished hopes that the influx of foreigners and the prestige of holding the Games would push China’s leaders to relax their tight grip on political expression.

“Can you imagine two old ladies in their 70s being re-educated through labor?” asked Li Xuehui, Ms. Wu’s son, who said the police told the two women that their sentence might remain in suspension if they stayed at home and stopped asking for permission to protest.

“I feel very sad and angry because we’re only asking for the basic right of living and it’s been six years, but nobody will do anything to help,” Mr. Li said.

It is unclear why the police have detained people who sought permission to protest. Some political analysts say the police may be refusing to enforce the government’s order, announced last month, to allow protest zones. Chinese lawyers and human rights advocates also suggested a more cynical motivation — that the authorities were using the possibility of legal demonstrations as a ploy to lure restive citizens into declaring their intention to protest, allowing the police to take action against them.....

Isard wrote:These Games remind me those of nazi Germany in 1936.
Just a big propaganda for a totalitarian regime...

BEIJING (AP)—A Cuban taekwondo athlete and his coach were banned for life after Angel Matos kicked the referee in the face following his bronze-medal match disqualification.

Cuban coach Leudis Gonzalez offered no apology for Matos’ actions during the men’s over-80 kg (176 pounds) match.

Matos was winning 3-2, with 1:02 in the second round, when he fell to the mat after being hit by his opponent, Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov. He was sitting there, awaiting medical attention, when he was disqualified for taking too much injury time. Fighters get one minute, and Matos was disqualified when his time ran out.

Matos angrily questioned the call, pushed a judge, then pushed and kicked referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden. Matos then spat on the floor and was escorted out.

“He was too strict,” Gonzalez said, referring to the decision to disqualify Matos. Afterward, he charged the match was fixed, accusing the Kazakhs of offering him money.....

One idea under consideration is for the upper house of Congress to take an initiative. Senate leaders met this morning to discuss ways to pre-empt the House of Representatives by beginning a debate on the package as early as tomorrow. This is an unusual manoeuvre as the upper house is not supposed to formulate legislation, but an idea intended to ratchet up pressure on the House to fall into line.

Alternatively, the treasury could begin tweaking the details of the bail-out plan in an effort to win more votes in the House. But feelings are running high - a Democrat congressman who voted against the plan, Pete Visclosky, compared it to robbery: "We are now in the golden age of thieves. And where I come from we put thieves in jail, we don't bail them out."