Harper's Weekly Review

Lots of News out of Iraq this week. Not much of it is good.

At least 162 people were killed in violence in Iraq, where
173 malnourished Sunni Arab prisoners, many of whom had
been severely tortured, were found in the basement of an
Iraqi Interior Ministry compound. "You know what happens
in prison," explained the Interior Ministry's
undersecretary for security. "Their skins," said one
witness, "got stuck to the floor." Two Iraqi businessmen
accused U.S. troops of caging them with lions in 2003. The
men were also severely beaten after they were not able to
tell Army interrogators where to find Saddam Hussein or
weapons of mass destruction. "I thought he was joking, so
I laughed," said one of the businessmen. "He just hit me."
In Basra two British-trained policemen had tortured at
least two civilians to death with electric drills. After
repeated denials, the Pentagon finally admitted to using
white phosphorus during the 2004 attack on Fallujah. "It
is an incendiary weapon," explained a spokesman.
Representative John Murtha (D., Pa.), called for the halt
of U.S. troop deployments to Iraq. Duncan Hunter (R.,
Calif.), seeking to cut off debate over Murtha's
statements, countered by proposing a measure that required
that U.S. troops be brought home immediately. Jean Schmidt
(R., Ohio) addressed Murtha, a decorated veteran and
former Marine colonel who previously supported the
invasion of Iraq, by quoting a Marine Corps reserve
officer who told her that "cowards cut and run." She was
booed by Democrats. "You guys," yelled Marty Meehan (D.,
Mass.), "are pathetic!" Harold Ford (D., Tenn.) ran
across the House chamber's center aisle to the Republican
side. "Say Murtha's name!" he shouted. Schmidt asked that
her comments be struck from the record, and Hunter's
resolution was rejected 403 to 3, with Murtha among those
voting against it. The House approved a $50 billion budget
cut that will increase Medicaid fees and reduce funding
for student loans and food stamps, and Congress voted
itself a $3,100 annual pay raise. The Pentagon revealed
that since September 11, 2001, it has detained more than
80,000 prisoners at facilities around the world, and UN
human rights experts decided not to visit Guantanamo Bay
because the United States refused to allow them full
access to detainees. A CIA official revealed that the
agency's annual budget, which is classified, is $44
billion. The Justice Department was considering an
investigation into how the Halliburton Company was
secretly awarded noncompetitive multibillion-dollar
contracts for oil-field repairs in Iraq.

A White House document showed that executives from large
oil firms met with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy
task force in 2001; the document was released a week after
representatives from those firms testified before a Senate
committee that they had not met with the task
force. Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward admitted
that a "senior administration official" had revealed the
identity of Valerie Wilson to him one month before
administration officials revealed Wilson's identity to
anyone else. The official is apparently neither I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby Jr. nor Karl Rove. Condoleezza Rice denied
any involvement. Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he
would call a new grand jury to investigate the Valerie
Wilson case. Bill Clinton referred to the Iraq war as a
"big mistake." "We never sent enough troops," he
said. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to
the New York Times in 1971, said that history was
repeating itself. The German intelligence officials who
interrogated "Curveball," an Iraqi who provided
intelligence that the Bush Administration used to justify
the war in Iraq, said that they repeatedly warned the
United States that Curveball (who may have been lying in
order to obtain a German visa) could not be trusted. "Mein
Gott!" said an intelligence official. "We had always told
them it was not proven." Ahmad Chalabi met with Dick
Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in
Washington, D.C. In Australia a ten-year attempt to create
pest-resistant peas was canceled after it was found that
the peas cause lung damage in mice. A Swedish study linked
oral sex to mouth cancer. A Florida woman was run over by
ten different cars while attempting to walk across a
highway. Police marked parts of her body with traffic
cones. "It is crazy out here," said a trooper, "to try to
cross the median." The U.K. was building a database that
will track the movements of every vehicle on its
roads. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito attempted to
distance himself from his statement, "the Constitution
does not protect a right to an abortion," which he wrote
in an application for a job in the Reagan
Administration. "It was a political job," he clarified,
"and that was 1985."

A Congressional investigation determined that the FDA
decided to bar over-the-counter sales of the "morning
after" pill before a scientific review of the pill was
completed. Eight possibly pregnant South African Boer
goats were missing in Lincoln, Nebraska. One Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, man was in trouble for drunken ice-cream-truck
driving, while another was in trouble for severely beating
his girlfriend with a cactus. Peter Drucker died, and
Prince Albert ascended to the throne of Monaco. The Night
Safari Zoo was preparing to open in Thailand; its buffet
will feature tiger, lion, elephant, and giraffe. In
Georgia a 37-year-old woman married a 15-year-old boy, and
the Kansas Board of Education had redefined "science" so
that it is "no longer limited to the search for natural
explanations of phenomena." The Vatican announced that
Intelligent Design was not science and did not belong in
classrooms. President George W. Bush visited China, where
he went to church. China announced that it will vaccinate
14 billion poultry against bird flu. Bodies were still
being found in New Orleans. An Oklahoma man confessed that
he killed two elderly women because he wanted to do
something exciting. The Senate refused to consider a
Democratic resolution to honor Bruce Springsteen. At a
convention center in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, a sparrow
flew in through an open window and knocked over 23,000
dominoes. The sparrow cowered in a corner until it was
shot and killed. Scientists found the gene that regulates
fear in mice and created mice that are not afraid. In
Chhattisgarh, India, a three-day-old baby died from an
infection when her parents were unable to afford
surgery. The baby had been born with her heart in her
hand.

-- Paul Ford