Many EU nations were aware that the CIA used their territory for the transfer or detention of terror suspects, a draft European parliament report says.

The report follows months of investigation by a special committee of MEPs led by an Italian, Claudio Fava.

"Many governments co-operated passively or actively (with the CIA)," said Mr Fava, quoted by AFP news agency.

He accused top EU officials including foreign policy chief Javier Solana of failing to give full details to MEPs.

The report echoed allegations made in June by the Council of Europe - Europe's leading human rights watchdog - that European states were complicit in illegal CIA operations as part of the US-led "war on terror".

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A European Union oversight body concluded today that an international banking-data consortium broke the law when it gave the Central Intelligence Agency and other American agencies access to its records of millions of private financial transactions. The body called on the consortium to stop providing the data.

The consortium, called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift for short, has drawn widespread criticism and scrutiny since the data transfers became publicly known early this year. American agencies requested the data so that their analysts could search for possible terrorist financing activity among the millions of confidential financial transactions that Swift oversees.

In a draft of a statement that will be made final on Thursday, the European Union’s data-protection “watchdog,” a committee made up of data-protection officials from the union’s member governments, says that financial institutions throughout the union share responsibility with Swift for the data sharing, which it concluded had violated the civil liberties of European citizens.

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My last post was about illegal actions by the Israeli government. This one is about illegal tactics used by Palestinian resistance fighters.

Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have been criticised for risking civilians by asking them to gather at suspected militants homes targeted by Israel.

Human Rights Watch said that using civilians as human shields or knowingly putting them in danger, were breaches of international humanitarian law.

The Israeli army often orders people out of homes ahead of attacks, saying it aims to avoid civilian casualties.

"There is no excuse for calling civilians to the scene of a planned attack," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

"Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target, knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm's way is unlawful," she said.

More at BBC News...

I normally post about Iraq, but the Iraq invasion was part of a larger and more complex issue. Read on:

An Israeli advocacy group has found that 39 percent of the land used by Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property, and contends that construction there violates international and Israeli law guaranteeing the protection of property rights in the occupied territories.

In a critical report released here Tuesday, the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now also disclosed that much of the land that Israeli officials have said would remain part of the Jewish state under any final peace agreement is private Palestinian property.

That includes some of the large settlement blocs inside the barrier that Israel is building to separate Israelis from the Palestinian population in the West Bank.

More from washingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House dismissed a classified CIA draft assessment that found no conclusive evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program, the New Yorker reported.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said the CIA's analysis was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites and on other evidence like measurements of the radioactivity of water samples.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," according to the article.

"A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it," it said.

The United States has accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian energy program.

More from Reuters

Here we go again.
- posted by truthspeaker    Comments

The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

Adelman, a former Reagan administration official and onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust, is only the latest voice from inside the Bush circle to speak out against the president or his policies. Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress.

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The vortex of violence in Iraq was also, presumably, not an intended consequence of the invasion.

The intense crime wave which disfigured daily life in Baghdad and Basra and other Iraqi cities in the early days of the occupation has evolved into car bombs, roadside bombs, suicide bombs, sniper attacks, drive-by shootings and sectarian killings. There have been mass abductions, minibus ambushes with the victims found dead in a field or floating in the Tigris river, torture followed by murder, severed heads left in cardboard boxes and hundreds of bodies found dumped in the street - often partially eaten by dogs.

Bombs have exploded in crowded markets, main shopping streets, mosques, churches, police and army recruitment centres, even buried under football pitches where children with no shoes play soccer in the dust.

"Stuff happens," the outgoing American Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, once said about the anarchic disorder which developed in Iraq after the invasion.

But they were all warned - by opponents and by friends alike - that "stuff" would happen.

A Pentagon adviser and former US ambassador, Peter Galbraith, foretold "chaos" and "a breakdown of law and order".

General Eric Shinzeki, former army chief of staff, advised that security in Iraq could only be maintained after the invasion if America committed between 300,000 and 400,000 troops.

He was slapped down by his superiors and accused of being "wildly off the mark".

BBC News: The stolen dream of Iraqi freedom

BBC News: Rumsfeld departure shakes Bush administration
- posted by truthspeaker    Comments

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Army Times - Editorial